My Ship
by deb-h
Summary: Amy says: "A cruel twist in fate begins this epic tale-in-progress chronicling the end of my innocence." Sixth part just finished, in which unneeded goodbyes are said. R [or M or whatever] for strong language and some sexual content.
1. Sunday 18 December 3003: Ascend

_My Ship, first part: Ascend_

by Deb H

* * *

**Sunday 18 December 3003**

Has it really been only a week and a half since I wrote here last? It seems like a lifetime has gone by. Or more.

Know how we get stuck in ruts sometimes? Like these past few months. I was just doing the same thing every day, just about. We had our share of interesting deliveries, sure, but nothing to write home about.

And then this past week.

This week, my whole life changed in a fraction of a second. No, not just my life. Thousands of people's lives. Millions, maybe, once it's all done with. All because of a little mistake I made.

Even now I'm not quite sure how it happened. I mean, I know what I did, and what the consequences have been. But my thought processes during that fraction of a second... I wish I could get them back.

No, that's not quite true. I don't wish I could have my thoughts back. I wish I could have that fraction of a second back.

But we gotta pay for what we do. I've paid for that mistake. Shit, I'm still paying for it. It's a huge emotional loan I've taken out, and I'm paying it back in tiny instalments, but in the meantime the interest just keeps piling up. What kind of payments will I be making in future? When will I finish paying it off? I don't know.

At least I do know, more or less, what happened. I guess this story starts a week ago. We were having a late Sunday evening at work to get the ship ready for the next morning's delivery. I was still trying to straighten out one of the engine nozzles. Those things had been giving me fits all weekend. They'd taken some hail damage or something on their last trip - it's usually pretty easy to smooth out the dents in the hull, but the nozzles are always trickier. They're built to deform less, but of course that means that when they do, it's next to impossible to get them back into shape.

Bender, of course, would be the right one for this job, but the ship's interior plumbing needed attention as well, and he and Fry were working on that.

"Okay, try it now," I heard Fry call from somewhere deep aft.

Then there was a flushing sound.

"Okay... fine so far... wait, this one's dripping... now that one's dripping... aw crap..."

I thought I could hear water spraying in there.

"Getting a little messy now... aaaah! Oof! Oh god, it's everywhere! It's all over! It's just... ooohhhhh!"

Now I could start to smell it. I climbed down from the nozzle and moved the ladder over to the drain valve. When I twisted the valve open, this nasty, greenish-brown sludge flowed out and started to collect on the floor of the hangar, draining down into the various grates. Then I heard Fry storming down the steps.

I aksed him, "Hey Fry, what happened?" He reached the floor, and I got a good look at him.

_Uuugh_. He was covered in the shit, head to toe. It was dripping from his hair, his fingers, his back, his shoes.

"Bender's shiny metal ass is _mine_," he murmured as he trudged up to the emergency shower.

Bender was on his way down now. He called after Fry, "Hey, weren't _you_ the one who thought that we didn't need to hook up that drain valve? But no! Blame the robot!"

I said to Bender, "You didn't even connect the drain valve? Where do you think the septic tank empties?"

He shouted, "That's what _I_ said!"

By this point Fry's clothing had been stacked up outside the shower, and he was inside trying to clean himself. Bender and I made our way up to the conference room.

Through the glass, I called, "You okay, Fry?"

"I'll be fine. I just gotta - _pah_!" he spat. "That stuff's nasty."

Just then Leela burst in. "Hey guys, guess what -" She stopped and took a sniff. "Blaugh, what the hell's that?"

Fry turned off the shower and said through the glass, "I'll give you a hint. It came out of our bodies and it's not spit."

He stepped out, still towelling himself off, and leaned over to give Leela a quick kiss.

"So, how'd it go?" I aksed.

She said, "Guess who's the new weekend colour commentator for the New New York Mets!"

"Leela, that's _awesome_!" Fry shouted as he leapt into her arms. "You're gonna be famous! Again, I mean."

"Yeah, I still can't believe they'd actually pay me to sit around and watch blernsball. It's a great planet, isn't it."

Bender added, "It sure is. Especially when the Sun comes up on the third day of happy hour. Speaking of which, let's go get drunk!"

Fry ran to the door, but then he stopped when he heard us laughing. "What?"

Leela suggested, "How about some clothes?"

He looked down at himself. "Oh. Right. Yeah." He started to put on the very same clothes he'd just cast off.

"Aw, g'uck!" I said. "That's just awful! Even for you!"

* * *

O'Zorgnax's was a bit sparse this evening. I usually see more people in bars on Sunday nights, but with more moderate weather today, perhaps people were doing other things.

Leela had gotten a call from the Mets last month - they were replacing one of their announcers and they wanted a former player. Her career hadn't been very long, of course, but she knew the game. Her blernsball knowledge would have put many of the guys I've known to shame. I'd been over to her place when she had a game on, and from time to time our conversation would be interrupted when she had a suggestion for the teams, like "What are you _doing_ throwing Mitchell a changeup inside? He'll hit that out every time!"

So, she went in for an audition. Then another. Today was her third audition; it must have been the winner.

"To the most beautiful voice of the Mets ever!"

"Oh stop."

Clink.

I said, "So you're going to do weekend games?"

"Yep." She had both arms around Fry, and his hand was stroking her purple ponytail. I'd worked with her for nearly four years, and her hair still looked ridiculous to me. To each their own, I suppose.

She continued, "I'll be working with Ralph Kiner's head. He'll do play by play and the funny anecdotes, and I'll bring the insight that comes from a career in the game."

"So, you'll be the silent one?" Bender said.

"Ohhhh, he got you!" Fry called.

Leela's expression soured. She was still learning to let that sort of joke go.

I tried to continue my line of questioning. "But you're still going to be working with us, right?"

"Of course I am. I couldn't dream of leaving you guys. Flying through space, making daring deliveries, having wild sex," - here she and Fry nuzzled tighter together - "what more could a girl want?"

Bender jumped in again. "A less freakish appearance?"

"He is on fire!" Fry laughed. He gave Bender a slap on the back, nearly falling out of his chair.

Leela continued, "Anyway, that's just sort of an extracurricular activity. This job is still my real career." She finished off her pint, and then she turned to Fry. "Your stench is improving, lover. I'm almost thinking about taking you home with me."

"Well then, perhaps I should coat myself in sewage every day." They laughed some more, and I started to think that maybe they were a cute couple after all. But then I decided to chalk it up to my low tolerance for alcohol.

"Hey skintube," the robot suddenly said. "We oughta be getting back."

"Yeah, you're right," the cryonaut answered. He said to Leela, "We got to get in early tomorrow and finish working on the plumbing."

"You're leaving me?"

"Only for a bit. I'll see you tomorrow." They kissed deeply, and he stood up, still holding her arms. She watched him leave, with Bender tagging along behind him.

He had just waved goodbye to her and disappeared round the corner when I started to giggle. Leela's eye narrowed at me. "What is it?"

"Nothing, nothing." I looked down at my glass, but I was still smiling.

"Come on Amy, let's hear it. I need to hear another stupid joke about me."

"No, no. That's not it."

I wasn't saying anything, but when she leaned back, folded her arms, and stared at me, I couldn't keep it in any longer.

"You _do_ love him!"

"What? No! I mean, I don't know. It's just, you know... The sex is good. The sex is spectacular, in fact. But..."

I waited for her to finish, but she wouldn't come forth any more. I had to prompt her, "How do you feel when he's around?"

She closed her eye and let out a little contented sigh. "I feel... well... lighter. Like we're in one-half G or something. Colours are brighter... tactile sensations are stronger... and I just feel... I don't know. Special. That's silly, isn't it?"

"And how do you feel when he's not around?"

"Same way I've felt my whole life."

I had to draw this out of her. "Meaning?"

"Like a misfit." She sneered at the word as it left her mouth, like it was the worst thing anyone could be. Well, maybe it is.

She started talking again. "Fry just gives me such a sense of... _belonging_. Everyone else judges me by my eye, or by my hair, or by my attire. Or by my tendency to kick ass first and aks questions later. Or -"

"Or those preposterous boots."

"Yeah, exactly. Or - hold it. What's wrong with these boots?"

"Well, um, there's nothing _wrong_ with them. I mean, if you're into that sort of thing. Anyway, you were saying?"

She was still staring down at her boots, but in a moment she looked up again. "See, that's it exactly. Everyone else makes me feel self conscious in some way."

"Sorry Leela. I didn't mean it like that."

"Yeah, I know. It's fine." She was silent for a minute. "I guess what it is... He treats me like I always wanted to be treated. But... I mean... that's still not really _love_, is it?"

"It ain't nausea, genius." In retrospect, it really shouldn't have surprised me that Leela wouldn't be able to recognise love. Had she ever even come _close_ to loving anyone? Not since I'd known her, certainly.

But Leela, being Leela, was still trying to rationalise it. "But he's so clumsy and unrefined and amateurish and, you know, he doesn't seem to know what it is he's doing."

"Ky'uh! That's because he doesn't know that you love _him_!" I was nearly shouting now, so irritated was I at her ignorance. "Leela, you gotta tell him! You know how afraid he is of the consequences of his actions."

"No he isn't. He always acts without thinking!"

"Only when he doesn't realise that there _are_ any consequences. But with you... well, he's done all that shit to try and make you love him, right? And it never worked. So now he still hopes that the next time will work, but now he's also afraid that the next time you'll finally decide you've had it and you don't want to see him any more! Don't you see? He's stuck!"

She shook her head and said, "Amy, that's ridiculous. I'd never push him away like that. He's still my friend."

"You know that, but he doesn't! You have to tell him!"

"What makes you so sure of all that about him, anyway?"

I responded, "Ever try talking to people? It works, you know."

"He told you all that?"

"Of course he did, Leela. I know you've only been going out with him for a week -"

"It's been more than a week, hasn't it?"

"No, it hasn't. It was the third, remember?"

She thought for a moment. "It sure seems like a lot longer than that."

"Yeah, because you love him. And if you can't tell him that now, you'll never have another chance. I mean, he's _this_ close to ditching you." I held up my thumb and my index finger, separated by about the width of her nose. "Seriously. He said to me, he's already waited four years. He doesn't have a lot of patience left."

"I know, I know," she said, slumping forward and resting her chin in her hands. "It's just... I..." She hesitated. "I still don't know if it is love."

"Did you or did you not just call him 'lover'?"

"I didn't! Did I?"

"You did," I told her. "You definitely did. When you made that crack about him smelling better."

She looked down and whispered to herself, "Aw, geez. Leela, Leela, Leela... what a mess." She whiled away a couple of minutes drawing circles on the table with her finger. In short order, the circles began to change shape and become... hearts? Nah.

I said, "You've got that delivery tomorrow, right? That's your chance. Proclaim that your heart belongs to Fry and no other."

"He won't like that. He'll find it corny."

I grabbed her hand and squeezed it between mine until I was sure I had her complete attention.

I said to her, "Sis, you won't know until you try."

* * *

The following morning, I showed up around 08:45. The ship looked to be in good shape. As I walked up the steps, I heard the toilet flush. I waited anxiously, but then Fry shouted, "Okay, she's all set!"

I went back for a cup of coffee, and when the boys arrived, Fry aksed, "Hey, how was girls' night out?"

"Pretty uneventful, except for the strip poker."

"I missed the strip poker again? I told you to call me the next time you play!"

I just laughed at him.

He thought a moment. "Oh, right. This is one of those jokes, isn't it? You didn't play strip poker at all. It was probably just Spin the Bottle."

I was still smiling when I took a seat at the conference table. A couple of minutes later I heard Leela enter. "Hey, Amy."

"What ho, captain," I answered.

From the next room I heard whisperings.

"There you are."

"There _you_ are."

"Did you miss me when you were sleeping?"

"Of course not. You were in my dream."

"You dreamed about me? Aw, now I feel bad! I didn't have a dream at all!"

Then I heard Bender. "Oh, for the love of -"

He entered and sat at the table across from me. He had what appeared to be the robotic equivalent of earmuffs on. "I'd rather listen to _you_ than to that garbage."

"Nice to see you too, Bender." I took another pull at the coffee.

Bender looked back at the kitchen door and said, "Wonderful. Here comes the Odd Eyed Couple."

As they sat at the table, Hermes and the Professor entered. The Professor announced, "Good news everyone! You're all a lazy, slovenly bunch of worthless slackers who do their jobs poorly if at all!"

"All right!" shouted Bender.

"Woo!" added Fry. The two of them slapped hands and performed a chest bump, which knocked Fry over. "Owwww."

"Wait a minute," said Leela. "That doesn't sound like good news at all. It's ill informed, derogatory, nonsensical, and seemingly inconsequential. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this borders on disappointing news!"

"Ah, but it be good news for us," Hermes explained. "You see, dere's a tax exemption for lazy, slovenly bunches of worthless slackers who do deir jobs poorly if at all. We don't have to pay taxes on your wages!"

"Woo!" shouted the Professor.

"All right!" added Hermes. The two of them slapped hands and performed a chest bump, which knocked the Professor over. "Owwww."

Luckily, Leela was keen to get back on subject. "So do we have, like, a package to deliver today, or what?"

"Oh my, yes." The Professor pointed to a big crate sitting on the floor of the hangar. "You'll be sending that crate of football uniforms to Canopus 5 Western Hemisphere High School. Their season opener is next week."

Leela looked up. "Canopus 5?"

The Professor's response, of course, was, "Guwha?"

Hermes jumped in and said, "Oh, you know Canopus 5?"

"Yeah, I know some... well, I know somebody there. I can visit him whilst Fry's making the shipment."

"You can't leave de ship unmanned. Somebody's got to watch over it if you're both going to be gone."

Bender said, "Yo! I'll be there! I love hanging out with the autopilot!"

Hermes stared at Bender for a moment, and then he said, "Sweet mother of Madagascar. Amy, you'd better go as well."

"You got it."

* * *

It was going to be a flight of about seven hours to Canopus 5, and about three hours in, I looked up from my book. "Hey, what happened to Bender?"

Leela, who was watching the news on the head up display, said, absent mindedly, "He's making lunch."

Fry was staring at Leela. She didn't seem to notice at first, but then she looked over and smiled at him before focussing on the news again.

I had to act if they weren't going to. So I stood up and said, "Leela, I'm going to go take a look at the... um... turret mount."

She wasn't getting the hint. "Sure, whatever."

"I might be gone for a while..." I nodded toward Fry in what I hoped would convey the message _tell him now_. I continued, "You know, I might be working on... what we, you know, _talked_ about last night."

She still seemed confused. "On the... oh." Her eye widened, and she snuck a glance at Fry. "Oh, that. Yeah, take all the time you need."

"Okay then." I put my hand on her shoulder on the way out.

When the door closed behind me, I put my ear up to it. Yeah, I know. I could have trusted her to be honest and open with Fry. I also could have put down a wager that Zoidberg would have eaten the entire Planet Express building by the time we got back. Each event was, in my estimation, equally likely.

I heard Fry first. "Looks like we've got the bridge all to ourselves."

Then I heard Leela giggling, as though Fry had gotten up out of his chair and was feeling her up. "Not now! We're on duty!"

"Come on. Nobody's here."

"Fry, I mean it. We've got a job to do."

"Don't you want to join the Million Mile High Club?"

"The what?"

"You know, when you've done it in space?"

"Fry, just shut up already. You sound like Zapp Brannigan."

Then a pause.

"No, Fry, that's not what I meant."

"No, you're right. I'd better go see how Amy's doing with the turret."

Shit! I stood up, ready to bump into him as though I was just on my way in.

But I still heard Leela stop him. "Wait, Fry. There's something I've got to tell you."

Finally! I put up my ear again, ready for the juicy bit. Leela continued, "You know when we -"

Just then Bender climbed up the ladder. "Lunch is -"

I shushed him. "Quiet! Leela's telling Fry she loves him!"

"You'll try any excuse to avoid my cuisine, won't you? Fine. I'm going EVA."

"Not now, Bender!" But right then, he slammed the airlock door and depressurised it. Now I was going to miss even more of the conversation.

Finally, the hissing died away, but I didn't hear anything from the bridge.

Then Fry. "What are you trying to say?"

Another pause. I could feel the awkwardness out here.

"Just forget it."

I slapped my hand against the bulkhead, thinking, _Leela, you idiot!_ I was walking away when Fry came through the door. "Where's Bender?"

"He went for a spacewalk."

"Did he make us 'lunch'?" he aksed, miming quotation marks on the word _lunch_.

"I think so."

"Word." He slipped down the ladder, and I walked into the bridge. Leela was still sitting in her chair, staring ahead.

I let the door close behind me and walked in front of her. She didn't look at me, so I began talking. "Okay class, who can tell me what went wrong? Anyone? Anyone?"

Then, all of a sudden, she jumped to her feet. "Dammit! I just couldn't do it!"

"Why? Why, Leela? Why couldn't you do it? You know that's what he's wanted to hear from you!"

"Don't you see? That's just it! What if it doesn't go well? I'll never be able to work with him again!"

"That's crazy! How can it not go well! Look at you two! You're the kind of relationship that they make those crappy TV movies about!"

"What about _me_, Amy? This isn't about some abstract concept that you use to validate your relationship with Kif! This is about two of your best friends!"

"If you're not... wait, what?"

"You can't be _that_ oblivious to this, can you? You equate Fry and me to Kif and you! You're like, 'If they succeed, we succeed! If they fail, we fail!' I mean, that's bollocks! I don't need your help! You worry about your own life, and I'll worry about my own, thank you very much!"

"It's not like that, Leela!"

"The fuck it isn't! Every time I think I know what to do, you come along! It's hard enough for me to sort out my feelings on my own! God! I am so _sick_ of this fucking relationship!"

She turned toward the door, but it was already open.

Fry was looking back at us. He'd caught only the last sentence.

He turned back toward his quarters.

Leela started to follow after him. I tried to hold her back, but she shoved me aside. "Fry, wait up!" She caught up to him and grabbed his shoulder.

He pushed her hand away. "I thought I understood you, Leela. I guess I was wrong. Just like always." He slammed the door shut. Well, it hissed shut, but it sure felt like a slam.

She put her hand against the door, then her forehead. Her eye was closed.

I walked up. "Leela..." I began. Seemed like as good a way to start as any.

She growled, "Haven't you done enough?"

"Look, I'm..."

"Enough with your meddling! You're worse than your mother!" She slammed the door to her own quarters.

I heard another slam behind me, and that one must have made me jump a metre into the air. "Bender! You scared the crap out of me!"

He'd slammed the airlock door on his way back in, and he said to me, "I just thought it was the in thing to do."

* * *

With Leela in her quarters, that meant I had to take control at the bridge. Not that anything happened that required immediate attention from a competent authority, of course. Space is just too damn big.

But it's all a matter of playing it safe. If an asteroid, or maybe another spacecraft, was about to hit us, the autopilot was the only thing that could react quickly enough anyway. It's just that the autopilot might unwittingly take us straight into a neutron star or something in the process. So even if having a person in the loop represents only the difference between a fatal crash and a merely life threatening crash, the potential benefit - ie, living - means you take shifts with a backup pilot whenever you can.

Space travel is for those who don't mind risks. Not for those who want risks.

An hour or two later, the door opened behind me. It was Leela.

"Good thing you're here," she said. She had red under her eye, more red in her nose, and her bangs were skewed to one side.

"Yeah, you didn't seem to be in the mood to pilot." I waited a moment, and then started to say, "It's my -"

Leela stopped me and said, "No, me first. I'm sorry I snapped at you like that. It was completely out of line. I'd throw myself into the brig, but, you know, we don't have one. And then you'd be flying on your own with nobody to back you up."

"Yeah, that's true. And I'm -"

"No, I'm not done yet. I'm also sorry for calling your motives into question. And for comparing you with your mother. And... well... you're not responsible for that bust up between Fry and me, but if you feel responsible for it, then I'm sorry for that as well."

"You done?"

She looked down at the thing she always wore on her wrist. "Yeah, that's about it."

"Okay then, listen to my laundry list of apologies. First off, you were right about my motives, much as it pains me to admit it. In a way, I do sort of compare you and Fry to Kif and me. I'm sorry that I was acting as a matchmaker rather than a friend. I'm sorry for any and all advice that you didn't want, and I'm sorry for starting that argument. I was just as responsible as you for that, and for that I'm sorry as well. Can you forgive me?"

She gave me a hug. "Can you forgive me?"

"Of course I can, Leela." I kissed her on the cheek. "Have you talked to him yet?"

She shook her head. "I was just about to do that."

I stood up, guided her into her chair, and said to her, "I'd better talk to him first."

* * *

"Fry? It's me. Can I come in?"

He opened the door. He had the same red under the eyes look as he invited me inside. "Sure, come on in."

We sat down on his bed, and kind of hung about for a moment. Finally, I started to talk. "I was just talking to Leela, and she -"

"Oh shit. She's breaking up with me, isn't she? And she sent you in to do it." He jumped up off the bed. "Dammit! I knew it! The hell was I thinking! Leela was never interested in me! I knew she couldn't love a poor guy from the Stupid Ages!"

"No, Fry, look -"

Pacing up and down, he suddenly slammed his fist into the bulkhead. "Ow!"

I tried to calm him down. "Fry, that's not it. Listen, she's not about to break up with you. Not even close."

He sat back down. "Come on, Amy. You heard her. Why did she say that about..."

I heaved a heavy sigh. "She's just confused about, you know... she doesn't know that she's in love with you."

"You mean...?"

"Yeah, Fry. She loves you. You've only been together a little while, but soon she'll admit it to herself. Then she'll tell you."

He was looking at me skeptically. "Did she tell you all that, or, how did you...?"

I didn't really know how to explain it simply. Eventually, I just said, "She talks about you all the time. _All_ the time."

"Really? Wait a sec. Good or bad?"

"Both." I guess I had to tell him everything. "She loves your kindness, your spontaneity, your fortitude, -"

He pondered that. "Fortitude... fartitude... heh heh."

"But she doesn't like your immaturity, your attention span, your mental facilities."

"Yeah, I guess I kinda knew all that already."

"So you see what you have to do."

He stood up and shouted, "Yes! It's just so crazy it might work!" Then he sat down again. "Wait, what do I have to do?"

"Rrrrgh," I groaned. "Just wait until she comes around. She'll tell you she loves you."

"You think she will?"

"Of course. She doesn't have a choice."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Look, don't you see? If she doesn't love you, she's just a hypocrite!"

"I'm not following you, but okay."

Just then there was a rumble as the ship settled on ground. "It'll have to wait. We've landed."

Before I could get up, he hugged me. "Thanks Amy. It's good to have you on my side. You let me know whenever you need anything, all right?"

"Me needing your help? That'll be the day," I joked.

"Sure, you say that _now_."

"Come on, you've got work to do." I pulled him up to his feet, and we walked up to the bridge.

Leela was examining something at Bender's console. She looked up as we entered and mumbled, "Um, hi Fry."

"Hi Leela. Uh, listen..."

I didn't think Leela was quite ready yet, so I jumped into the pause and said, "Fry, why don't you make the delivery now? You two will have plenty of time to talk on the way back, I'm sure."

Leela replied, "Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Um, here's the address, Fry." She handed over a clipboard. "Can you find it okay?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Well, you know, call us if you run into trouble or anything."

"Sure. And you call me if you run into trouble."

"Sure."

They stood for a moment, their eyes not meeting. Finally Fry said, "Well, I'm gonna... I'm gonna go."

"Okay."

"See you in a bit." He gave a little wave on his way out.

Leela collapsed into her chair. "Oh god, what a mess. Did you talk to him?"

"Yeah, I did." I sat on the couch. "He'll be okay for now, but sis, you gotta tell him. I'm not gonna be the gobetween any more. So I'll fly us back, and you take him to your quarters or the turret or the galley or the bathroom or wherever the hell you have to go to tell him."

She didn't say anything.

At that point I realised what was going on. "Sorry. I'm meddling again."

"No, you're right. I guess if I can't do it now, I never will."

There was a pause as we watched Fry push the hoverdolly out of sight. Since we'd landed at night, that didn't take very long. Leela turned to me. "Can you watch the ship for a while? There's someone I'm meeting here."

"Who's that?"

"Let's just say it's somebody who owes me something."

That should have made me very uneasy. But it only made me slightly uneasy. I aksed, cautiously, "Are you going to be okay out there?"

"I'll be fine."

"You're sure?"

She got up and said, "Amy, it's not a problem. I'll be fine. I'll be back in an hour or two."

"What, we're just supposed to wait around for you?"

"Well, the Professor might not notice if you come back without me, but I'm pretty sure Hermes will."

We laughed at that. She turned around to leave.

"Leela?"

She stopped in the doorway.

If I had it all to do over again, I would have said something different right then. I would have said, _Where can we find you?_, or _Don't stay too long_, or _Don't turn off that thing on your wrist_, or _After two hours, we're gonna come after you_, or _Bring a gun along_.

If only I could have it all to do over again.

Instead, the only thing I did say was, "Be careful."

"Of course."

In a couple of minutes, I watched her walk off to our starboard, with her green coat on.

* * *

In a while, my communicator beeped. I answered, "Yeah?"

Fry's voice said, "What up. Where's Leela?"

"Meeting a friend."

"Oh yeah, she said she knew someone on this planet. Anyway, there's nobody here. I'm coming back."

"You can't leave the package there. Needs a signature."

"Of course it needs a signature, Amy. I know how to deliver. I'm a delivery boy."

"Yeah, yeah. You're bringing it back?"

"Yes, I'm bringing it back."

* * *

So he brought it back, and we talked about junk, and stuff. Our policy is three delivery attempts, spaced by three hours each, and after that you gotta pick up your own sp'reaking package.

Before we knew it, my alarm went off, and I looked over at Fry. "Three hours. Ready to try again?"

"I was born ready," he said with eyes narrowed. I just shook my head at him. He has those 20th century things that I try not to pay attention to.

As he left for the cargo bay, he stopped and said, "When did Leela say she'd be back, anyway?"

"Leela!" I hit myself in the head. "I totally forgot about her! She said two hours!" I tried to call her, but got no response.

Fry gave me a worried look and declared, "Something's wrong. It's not like her not to respond."

"Maybe she's in a concrete building. They absorb the signals like you wouldn't believe. Fry, go and deliver the package. I'll call you if I hear from her."

He hesitated. I think he wanted to go out and look for her, which I was starting to consider myself. So I told him, "Look, who knows, maybe you'll find her on the way."

"Yeah, maybe. Hey, why don't we... no, never mind. Yeah, okay, I guess that would work. Hey Bender!"

He appeared with a racing form in one hand. "Is this important? I got seven hundred on Your Mom's Ass to win the Trapezium Derby."

"Bender, go and look for Leela. Amy, keep watch for her and try to contact her every five minutes. I'll deliver the package, and then I'll join up with you, Bender."

Bender pointed at me and suggested, "Why don't we just do her up to look like Leela? You know, dye her hair, change her clothes, poke an eye out -"

Fry slapped Bender with a hollow _clang_. "Bender! Ordinarily I would laugh at your whimsical diatribes, but this is neither the time nor the place! When we find Leela, I will laugh! Not before! Let's go everyone!"

The two of them left, and I was left to marvel at this change in Fry. The irony was that Leela could never see him in Worried-About-Leela Mode; if she was around, there was no need for him to worry. And yet, under these circumstances, he was exactly what she loved in him. He was exactly what she wanted in _any_ man.

I continued along this line of thought for a moment. Then I got a ring from Fry. "They've got the package. I'll bring back the hoverdolly, and then I'll meet up with Bender."

"Got it. Nothing from Leela yet."

"Okay."

Then I got another call. "What?"

"Amy! I need your help!"

I jumped up. "Leela! Where are you?"

She was breathing heavily, as though she was running. "I'm a couple of minutes from the ship, but I'm being chased. Get a weapon!" She clicked off.

I grabbed a laser pistol and jumped down the steps. I looked around toward the city, in the direction she'd left in, but didn't see anything. I called Fry.

"Fry, I got her! She'll be here in a minute."

"Thank god! I'll be there in five."

"Right."

We appeared to have landed in a hilly area outside the city. Things were getting light now; it had been night when we landed. Which, as occurred to me as I was sitting there, probably explained why nobody was there to receive the delivery that first time.

I saw movement over one hill. A figure that looked like it could have been Leela appeared... followed by another figure. This one was taller, and it looked like it was gaining on her. I gripped the gun as I tried to hide in the stairwell and peek around it.

Now I could definitely tell it was Leela, carrying a box about big enough to hold a partyboard. The guy chasing her was nearly on her, and I shouted her name. The second time, she heard me.

"Amy!"

"Look out!"

She turned around, just in time to see the guy jump on her. They were about thirty metres from the ship, and I could see them quite clearly. I wasn't sure if the guy had spotted me yet.

This fight must have lasted only a minute or so, but it felt much longer to me. It seemed to be happening as slowly as all the movie fight scenes.

The box clattered aside, and Leela elbowed him in the face, getting up when he staggered back. He kicked her in the stomach. She kicked him in the jaw. He missed a punch, and she grabbed his arm and flipped him over. He brought his legs back up and kicked her in the back of the head.

I watched her fall hard to the ground. She rolled to the side, missing another of his kicks. She jumped up and called to me, "I got him, Amy!"

Then, she landed the most extraordinary sequence of punches and kicks. A left handed jab to the face, a right footed roundhouse kick to the face, four punches from alternating hands, a left footed kick right in the jaw. She ducked down and spun around, hooking her right foot around his legs and knocking him off balance.

He started to fall to the side, but as Leela prepared to deliver the decisive blow, he suddenly jumped up and grabbed her by the throat, holding her above the ground.

I looked down at the pistol in my hand. A hand that was shaking uncontrollably. Leela would be depending upon this hand.

I managed to release the safety catch on one side of the gun. When I looked up again, Leela's arms and legs were wrapped around the aggressor's arms, trying to free herself. It didn't look like it was working.

I thought I heard her grunt, "I don't got him," but I don't think I really would have been able to hear that at that distance.

I raised the pistol. My hand was moving like crazy, but when I thought I had it pointed at him, I squeezed the trigger.

I swear I could see the path that my shaking hand carved for the beam, even more slowly than before. First I saw the beam miss completely. Then it moved back toward the guy. I saw it intersect his neck and move across until it had surely cut the carotid arteries.

But it kept moving.

It sliced into Leela's left elbow. Then the guy's forearm. Then Leela's back. It cut a diagonal line starting on the left side of her back, halfway down the ribcage. It drifted to the right side, to about where her kidney would be. Then it started to swing back to the left, like a pendulum. It sliced back across, reaching her waist on the left side before it finally stopped.

They both fell to the ground, ever so slowly. He had released his grip on her.

Finally, I was able to move my legs. After infinitely many steps, I got to them. The guy had quite clearly died, and Leela wasn't in very good shape either.

I knelt down next to her. "Leela, we got to get you to the medbay!"

She shook her head.

"What, have you lost it? You're hurt badly. Come on, let's go!"

I wrapped my arms under her shoulders and pulled. She groaned in pain.

When I looked down, it was sickening. I think my exact words were, "Oh, god, no."

She was coming apart. Literally.

The sideways _V_ that was sliced in her back actually cut all the way through her body. The black lines had opened up slightly, revealing horrid burned flesh.

She started to talk. Whisper, really, as though her lungs had been cut as well.

"Amy. It's... your ship now."

Now I was shaking my head. "We'll get you to the medbay, and you'll be fine. Fry will be here any minute now."

She looked up at me. "Fry! He..."

"Shhh. Save your strength. You'll need it." The tears were welling up in my eyes now. I could barely see her through them.

"Tell him... I..."

She seemed to run out of breath then. But her mouth kept moving. And when I blinked the tears away, damned if I didn't see her lips form the word _love_.

About then I realised that the thing she always wore on her wrist was displaying her pulse. I noticed one more beat, a very feeble one, and then nothing.

She had flatlined.

I cradled her head in my hands, unsure what to do. Then I saw that her eye was still open. It had been a sad eye when she said Fry's name.

It was a lifeless eye now. A cold, lifeless eye staring back at its killer.

Somehow, I had enough motor control to lower the eyelid shut with my fingers, and when I looked up, I turned around and saw Fry pushing the hoverdolly onto the cargo elevator.

I tried to call out to him, but my vocal cords weren't cooperating. I tried again. "Fry! Over here!"

He saw me and began to hurry over. Then his eyes widened, and he broke into a sprint.

When he got close, he let out a faint gasp. "Leela?" He knelt down and grabbed her hand. He put his ear to her chest. "No... you can't..."

I put an arm around him. He did the same for me. And we wept for our friend.

* * *

After that there are a lot of gaps in my memory. We must have called Bender back, because the next thing I recall was the three of us carrying her back to the ship, using the box as a stretcher.

Then I remember walking into the medbay. This must have been just after we took off. Fry was standing over her body, and I stood next to him.

Fry finally aksed the question I'd been dreading. "So... what happened?"

I told him about the call I got, and the guy fighting her. But I stopped when I got to the critical moment: "He was holding her aloft, by the neck, and she was struggling to break free... and then..."

When I fell silent, he spoke. "Oh my god. He shot her. At point blank range."

His hand traced the brutal burn lines across her body. Then he looked up at me and said, "What happened to him? Did he get away?"

I said, "Didn't you see his body?"

He shook his head.

"I shot him. He's dead too."

He looked down at Leela again. I cursed myself silently for my lack of honesty.

We stood there for some time, looking at what had been our captain.

I've no idea what Fry was thinking at the time. As for me, it was mostly regret.

I regretted that I was too willing to let Leela run off on her own. I regretted not making her arm herself. I regretted my involvement in their relationship. I regretted not being truthful with Fry.

More than anything, I regretted how I responded when Leela needed me. My worst mistake. Why did I shoot from so far back? Why didn't I just move in closer? I would have had much better aim from closer in, and maybe if he'd seen me, he would have been distracted, dropped her, and turned to face me. Then I would have a clear shot at him.

These were the things that I thought as we flew back toward Earth. After an interminable period, Bender showed up and clapped Fry on the back. "Hey Fry, you ready to go through Leela's stuff, or what?"

I was about to express my own outrage when Fry grabbed Bender by the shoulders and pinned him against the bulkhead. In a low voice full of rage, he growled, "Bender, if you touch any of Leela's stuff, so help me, I will dismantle you piece by piece and throw every piece into a different star. Understood?"

"Hey, what's gotten into you? I was just, well, you know how I feel about looting."

"Yeah, I know. And you know how I feel about Leela."

"Yeah, okay. I'll just loot your stuff instead."

"Thanks Bender. That means a lot to me."

Bender patted Fry on the shoulder and left again.

I said to Fry, "So that's the closest you guys ever come to a 'moment', is it?"

He turned back to Leela's body. He put a hand to her cheek as he said, quietly, "She looks... I don't know... troubled somehow. As though she has unfinished business, like Hamlet's father."

When he looked up at me, he noticed my incomprehension, and he said, "What, people don't read Shakespeare any more?"

"Of course we do. I read _The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged_ in high school just like everybody else."

"You remember the ghost of Hamlet's father?"

This Hamlet character wasn't ringing a bell. Maybe it was something from the sonnets. Nobody ever read those, anyway.

He turned away. "Never mind. It's not important."

When I looked back at Leela again, I could sort of see what Fry was getting at. She looked a bit like she still wanted to do something. But what?

"Fry."

"Yeah?"

"I haven't told you her last words."

He looked up at me anxiously. He seemed cautiously optimistic, but I think he was afraid of what they might be.

So I took his hand, and I told him, "She said she loved you."

"She did? She said that?"

I nodded. "With her last breath."

He looked down at her and sniffled. He bent down, kissed her cheek, and said in a hoarse whisper, "I loved you too. I still do."

That was too much for me. I started crying again, and he pulled me into an embrace. I rested my head on his shoulder, and in a moment, he put his head on my shoulder.

* * *

The next thing I remember was still in the medbay. The autodoc had just signalled its completion. We'd left it running the whole time to examine Leela's body and do sort of a preliminary autopsy.

We looked up. The right shoulder of my sweatsuit was still soggy, and Fry's jacket and shirt were similarly stained. The ship felt cold to me as I got up and tore off the printout.

What I saw was unbelievable.

The left lung had been torn neatly in half; the right had collapsed. The spinal column was severed in two places. The liver and gall bladder had both ruptured. Renal failure. Internal bleeding. Hypoxia everywhere.

She hadn't stood a chance.

I thought I heard something. I looked up at Fry, and he was staring at me. "I said, what's it say?"

I couldn't speak. I would rather have kicked him in the nuts than show him this.

"Amy, you're so pale. What is it?"

"I'm not..." My hand looked normal. I looked around for a mirror. There was one in the corner, above the sink. I did look pale.

I looked back at the autodoc's report, but I couldn't find it. When I turned around, I saw that Fry had taken it. He was running one hand through his hair, and his back was sliding down the bulkhead until he sat on the floor.

He said to himself, "Oh god. How painful it must have been..." He looked at me. "How bad was it?"

I _really_ didn't want to talk about it.

"Please, Amy. I have to know."

"I just don't know, Fry. She kind of went _oof_ when I tried to pick her up, but... I don't know. She didn't say she was in pain, at least."

He seemed a little heartened by that. "That's Leela, all right. Never show pain."

"Yeah."

* * *

Some time after that, my communicator gave a _ping_ that meant we were minutes from Earth. I was sitting on the floor, where Fry had been. He was standing over her again.

"Fry, I gotta go land."

"Okay. I'll be in here."

New New York was in darkness. The clock said it was nearly 05:00. It had taken us a good nine hours to get back.

When we touched down in the hangar, I called for Bender on my way out of the bridge. Fry called from the medbay, "He's down here."

As I entered, Bender was showing Fry some of the stuff he'd stolen. "Your toothbrush - rarely used - your instant bacon mix, your pocket Scrabble set, your pocket dictionary - rarely used..."

So we carried Leela to the cargo lift. As we descended, we heard Hermes shouting, "Where in Babylon 5 have you been? Don't expect overtime pay for..."

He trailed off when he saw us. More when he saw Leela, really.

"Oh sweet manufacturer. Is she..."

"She's gone, Hermes," I said.

Hermes stared at her for some time, eventually lifting a hand up to rest gingerly on her forehead. As soon as he touched her skin, he drew in a sharp little breath and pulled his hand back a bit. But then he put his hand, ever so carefully, across her forehead as though taking her temperature.

He looked up at us and said, "So what... what happened?"

Fry said, "Her friend on Canopus 5 turned out to be a little less friendly than we'd like."

Hermes removed his glasses and rubbed the back of his hand across his face. He replaced his glasses and started to walk away, slowly. "I'll get a doctor for de death certificate. Someone notify de next of kin."

I turned to Fry. "Oh no, her parents! How am I going to tell them?"

He said, "Let me do it. They know me a little better."

"I have to. I'm the new captain." _And I'm the one who killed her_, I thought.

"We'll both go. I don't think I can do it on my own, anyway."

"Okay."

* * *

We wandered through the sewers on a sleepy morning. It was still early, and we saw only a few people about.

At one point Fry stopped. "Amy, look."

"What?"

We were in front of a newspaper machine that a guy was loading. He took out a couple of leftover copies of yesterday's edition, which Fry was pointing at.

I looked at the headline.

**Mets sign broadcaster Leela**  
_History making player to announce weekend games in 3004_

Next to a file photo of Leela throwing a pitch for the Mets was an article describing the new job for the "pride of New New York's sewers".

The newspaper guy noticed us. "Yeah, that Leela, she's something, ain't she? Who woulda thought one a us would be doin' all the stuff she done, hey?"

Then he examined us a little more closely. He had brown fur on the backs of his arms and his legs, and his legs appeared to have some sort of extra joint in there.

He said, "Youse two don't really look like one a us, do you?"

Fry answered, "No, we just, um, we just know her."

"Hey, yeah, you're those normal people she works with, ain't youse!" He punched Fry on the arm. "So you finally got her, didja! Yeah, she's had her eye on you. Hey man, all the best. Tell her she's representing the sewers." He held up a fist as he walked away.

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah," Fry added.

When we got to their house, the lights were on. "That's good," I said. "Thought we'd have to wake them up."

"Yeah."

I rang the bell, and Mr Turanga showed up. "Fry! Amy! Hey, come on in."

As we entered, Fry said to him, "Good morning, Mr Turanga. Um, I hope it's not too early."

"Nah, we always get up early." He called into the next room, "Munda! We got guests!" He turned back to us and laughed. "Hey, you're not both picking up our daughter for a date, are you? That would be a little weird, you know. Not that there's anything wrong with it. We're quite broad minded."

"Amy, Fry! Come in!" Mrs Turanga said from the kitchen doorway. "Have a seat. I'll put some tea on."

"Um, actually..." Fry started, but she was gone already.

Fry and I sat down in chairs across from the couch. I looked over my shoulder.

The wall was covered with pictures of Leela.

From the orphanarium, from her first job, from Planet Express, from every little side job she'd ever held, from just about every interesting thing she'd ever done. Over on the side I saw a photograph I'd taken of her, when I put some white flowers in her hair. They really made her look pretty.

And the centrepiece was a large portrait of the whole family. Leela was seated in the middle. Mr Turanga, standing to her right, had an arm over her left shoulder. Mrs Turanga, standing to Leela's left, had a tentacle over her right shoulder.

Tears were collecting in my eyes again. Fry rested a hand on my shoulder.

Mr Turanga called, "Munda?"

"Let me put the water on, Morris."

"I don't think we need tea just yet."

"Oh, don't be silly. It'll just take a minute."

"Munda, come here."

I looked up at Mr Turanga. He seemed uneasy. I think he could tell what this was all about.

Mrs Turanga walked in. "What is it, Morris?"

She sat down next to Mr Turanga. They held hands - they held appendages, at least - and looked at us.

I'll never understand how Fry was able to do what he did next. I figured he'd break down and I would have to tell them, and I can't even begin to consider how I could have. I mean, I was only her friend. How devastated would her _parents_ be? Especially with all that they'd gone through for her.

But when Fry stood up, I just lowered my head and held my hands together.

Fry said, "Mr and Mrs Turanga, I must regretfully inform you that last evening New New York time, your daughter, in single combat with an aggressor, received a laser wound, the complications of which..." He swallowed hard. "Leela has passed on."

When I finally looked up, her parents were holding one another tightly. Mr Turanga dabbed at his wife's tears with a handkerchief. He left his own tears.

Fry continued, "If there's anything that Amy and I can do for you at this time, please do let us know. We'll do whatever we can."

Mr Turanga looked up and aksed, "May we... may we see her?"

"Yes, of course," Fry responded. "Let's call Hermes."

They went into another room, and I stayed back.

"Amy?" Fry said, quietly.

I turned to face him. He was in the doorway, holding a hand out to me.

I said, "I'll stay here."

Our eyes met for a moment. He was concerned about me, I could tell. But he nodded and retreated through the doorway.

I turned round to face Leela's wall.

* * *

I don't know how long I spent looking at all of those pictures. They told a story, although it was a more upbeat story than the one Leela would tell about herself. She was portrayed as one of the brightest students in the orphanarium, and one who was tolerant, accepting even, of her classmates regardless of how they treated her.

She finished her education and was assigned to a fate as a fate assignment officer. The photographs captured a woman whose talent outgrew the menial tasks to which she was put. She couldn't be bothered to assign fates for the poor saps from centuries ago who blustered into her office. She was going places.

And it wasn't until a guy with a red jacket and a beer can blustered into her office one Tuesday that she finally began going places. One career chip extraction later, she was openly invited to the only job that seemed to fit her. She flew the starship that made shipments for the only remaining relative of that redheaded guy, who would cover the terrestrial leg of each mission.

Add in a cute engineer to maintain the ship, and a bending unit to sit around and look busy, and you had a team that knew no fear. A team that could fight any battle, overcome any obstacle, meet any challenge, deliver any box.

Their captain, in between slaying alien monsters and flying heroic missions, conducted a quite personal two pronged exploration. The questions that she was exploring were, bluntly, _Does she love the guy in the red jacket or doesn't she?_, and _Who is she, for fuck's sake?_

With the help of the guy that she may have loved, she answered the second question. She was just an ordinary old human, a mutant with loving parents who kept an eye out for her and tried to smooth her path whenever they could. Though they feared the worst, she embraced them and welcomed them happily into her life.

And somewhere, in amongst all those occasions when either she saved his ass or he saved her ass, they became an item. Any moment now, she would fall for him, hard.

It was a fairy tale.

That is, up until the last page.

"She led quite a life, didn't she?"

I turned around. Mr Turanga was behind me, holding two cups of tea. I took one. "Thanks." I took a sip, but I didn't taste much of anything. "It seemed as though she could handle any situation."

"Except one."

When I didn't reply, he cocked his head toward the other room, saying, "She never told Fry how she felt about him, you know."

"I know. I only wish she could have."

He looked into his cup for a while before he got up and went to a bookcase. He handed me a thick book with a black unmarked cover.

"What's this?" I aksed. The first page bore a newspaper clipping.

**Mutant to live on surface**  
_Hopeful parents leave nearly-normal baby at NNY orphanarium_

"These were all taken from the _Sewer Observer_," he explained. "She was something of a celebrity amongst us."

I turned to the back. There were several empty pages, but before them was a copy of the same article Fry and I had seen on the way in. In between were hundreds of articles about Leela's birthdays, vacations, life events. They ran an entire section heralding her status as the first mutant to graduate from a surface high school. There were gossip columns about her failed relationships, the columnists constantly decrying the hypocrisy of surface dwellers who claimed to accept everyone but couldn't even look Leela in the eye on a date.

One caught my eye.

**'I think Fry's the one'**  
_Leela bares all in exclusive interview_

I looked up at Mr Turanga and said, "This was just last week."

"They got a couple of interviews with her this year. You can imagine it was big news when she hooked up with Fry."

I couldn't imagine that sort of scrutiny on anyone's life. I wouldn't want to pick up the newspaper in the morning and see a big article about Kiffy and me.

Then again, she deserved it. She'd already accomplished more than I ever will. Ten times over, in fact. I mean, what do I ever make the news for? Getting kidnapped and being held for fifty billion dollars ransom, that's what. Nobody knew whose kid she was, so she had no choice but to make a name for herself. And did she ever.

Did she like being a heroine to all these mutants? Did it make her nervous? Did it annoy her? Just how did she feel about all that?

I shut the book and held it out, but he wouldn't take it. "That's for you and Fry to keep," he said. "You were such good friends for her. This is the least we can do."

Fry and Mrs Turanga entered, and Fry told us, "The service is set for eleven tomorrow. Hermes and the mortuary are taking care of everything."

I stood up. "What should you and I do?"

"Get into bed, Amy. We've been up for almost twenty four straight hours."

I hadn't yet realised it. I thought it was just emotional exhaustion.

We hugged her parents, and Fry aksed, "Are you two going to be okay?"

"We'll be fine," Mrs Turanga assured us. "What about you two?"

I said, "I think we'll be okay. We just need some rest."

"We'll see you tomorrow, then," Mr Turanga said.

Mrs Turanga added, "Leela was so lucky to have friends like you. She would be so proud."

Fry responded, "Nah, she'd be proud of you. I can only imagine how hard it must have been to leave her on the surface, but... well, for what it's worth, I think you made the right choice. We'll see you tomorrow."

"Sleep well."

"We'll certainly try."

* * *

On the way back, I called Kiffy. He was stunned, of course. He had a lot of respect for Leela. More than for his own boss, at least. Originally he was going to come to Earth at the weekend to spend Xmas with me, but he said he'd try to get a couple of extra days' leave to make the funeral.

When I hung up with him, the word stuck in my mind. "Funeral," I said to myself.

"Hmmm?"

I replaced the personhole cover. "We're really doing it, Fry. We're burying our best friend."

"Submerging, actually."

"What?"

He told me, "The mutants have this tradition where they submerge the deceased in the lake. The body decomposes and becomes part of the next generation. It's their way of ensuring that past generations aren't forgotten."

I thought that over. "I kind of figured we'd give her a proper burial at space."

"Maybe, but this would mean a lot to her parents. And she did love her parents."

When we got to the office, Zoidberg was sitting at the conference table, sobbing. He looked up at us. "There you are already! I have a confession! I, Zoidberg, am responsible for Leela's death! I throw myself at your mercy and beg forgiveness!"

Fry tried to calm him down. "Zoidberg, it's not your fault. What would make you think that?"

"Oh, you're very kind for saying that. But the truth has been haunting me! Haunting me!" he moaned. "For, you see, I must share a terrible secret! Two years ago, when I gave our fair captain a morphine injection, it had little effect. I pondered the problem throughout the night until I discovered the reason for the anomaly. It was not morphine at all! It was ibuprofen, it was! For those two years I have lived with this mistake, and now it has caught up with me! The ibuprofen has killed her! And all because of one little mistake! The agony!"

I put my hands on his arms and said, "Zoidberg, ibuprofen isn't fatal to humans. It's a painkiller. We use it all the time."

"Look, I appreciate that you're trying to ease my guilty conscience. But I must live with the consequences of my actions! Oh, Zoidberg, you are not fit to administer medicine!" He ran off crying.

Fry pointed in the direction that Zoidberg had escaped in and observed, "He's got issues."

I walked down the steps to the hangar floor. Leela was still there, resting in state.

That was the first time I could really bring myself to get a good look at her. _God, Amy girl, look what you did_, I thought.

From the waist down, it was nothing out of the ordinary for her. Her legs, of course, were wrapped up in her habitual black pants. We'd worked out together so many times, I well knew how developed the muscles underneath there were. Those hardwood legs of hers ended in feet that, if they were on my legs, I would have locked inside massive boots all the time as well. They were simply larger than a woman's feet should be.

Between the waist and the ribcage, she was criscrossed by white bandages, laid down on top of her tank top. One of them had been laid down in two layers. It ran vertically up from the right side of her waist to about the last rib, where it met the other bandage that had been wrapped diagonally upward, coming just below her left breast before it looped back around her back. This one must have been wrapped five layers deep, and where the lower layers peeked out, they bore the rusted hue of dried blood. The first bandage had large red spots as well.

There was another bandage wrapped around her left elbow. Once again the bottom layer or two had been soaked with blood.

Her arms were also solidly built, the ridge of her biceps clearly defined under her skin, which had lost much of its colour. The bandage on her left arm had given her some strange sort of symmetry, counterbalancing the thing she always wore on her right wrist.

Her purple hair was sprawled off to her right, looking like the coma of a comet that had been laced with some crazy chromium impurity. The plume that normally hung straight down in front of her eye - making me wonder how she could even see - had now settled on the left side of her face.

Back on the ship, I hadn't been able to tell quite what it was that prompted Fry's remark about unfinished business. Looking at her now, I could see a hint of a frown, along with a slight furrow in the eyebrow. Were it not for her paled complexion, I could easily imagine that she was just on the cusp of awakening from a dream.

That, of course, was exactly what I wanted. I just wished I could wake up from this awful, awful dream.

Leela dying was bad enough. Leela dying at my hands was orders of magnitude worse. But why didn't I tell Fry what really happened?

I've been giving a lot of thought to that question. It was probably related to the circumstance. For a moment he thought that guy was still running free, and I think Fry sounded as though he wanted to kill him. Avenge Leela's death.

Which is understandable. If it had gone down the way Fry thought, I would have shot the guy. For the same reason.

If only it had happened that way.

So I think, subconsciously, I was trying to protect myself. If Fry discovered that I fired the lethal blast, would he then seek justice against me? Probably not, but in the heat of the moment, perhaps he was capable of a revenge killing. I had seen how angry he could be at Bender.

Besides, I was next in line to the captain's chair. Wouldn't it call my motives into question? Would it look like I killed her for her position?

It might look like that if we were talking about a high military rank or a government office or something. But if I wanted to captain a delivery ship, I could always move to a competing company. Four years at Planet Express had given me an impressive résumé for my age.

But would anyone else see it that way? They would aks questions. Amy, you were second in command. One laser blast later, and you're first in command. Did you really expect us to believe that your _hand_ was _shaking_?

"Amy? Hello-o?"

I turned around to see Fry waving his hand. "Bender's left us some breakfast, if you're hungry."

"I don't think I can eat anything now."

"Look, it's been at least sixteen hours since I've eaten anything. Probably longer for you. You gotta eat something. Besides, it's actually pretty good."

* * *

Oddly enough, it _was_ good.

When I was staring at Leela's body, contemplating my situation, Fry had been talking to Bender. As Fry recounted to me over breakfast, Bender went straight to the kitchen when we landed and kept cooking whilst we were at the Turangas'. Before he left for Vegas, he stocked the refrigerator with several different dishes and left a breakfast composed of French toast and omelets.

It was good enough that I wondered how good it might be on a day when I wasn't trying to swallow everything past that massive lump in my throat.

Once we had the dishes cleaned up and stowed, Fry said, "So... umm... what are you doing now?"

"Um... going home, I guess. You?"

"Same thing, I guess."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

Silence.

Fry stammered, "Um, Amy?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you... I mean... I don't think I could stand being alone tonight. Maybe, um, would you..."

"Crash with you tonight? Of course, Fry. I was going to aks that anyway."

* * *

By this point, it was already light out. It was about 07:30, and people were starting to make their way _to_ work. Here we were, just coming _from_ work.

I sat on Fry's bed when we got in. He went into the kitchen and shouted, "Want anything to drink?"

I called back, "What have you got?"

"We got plenty of beer."

"You got anything harder?"

"Umm..." I heard cans shifting, and then, "No. Just beer."

"Well then I'll have a beer."

He entered and handed me a can of Löbrau as he settled next to me.

"Thanks man." I popped it open and took a big swig. "Shit. What a day."

He drank from his own can and put it down on the floor, saying, "Yeah. You said it. The only woman I've ever loved is dead."

"Hey, jerk, what about me?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry. But, to be honest, I don't think I really loved you. Not in the same way I love Leela."

I thought that over. I suppose I loved Fry in a manner of speaking, but it was more a sort of puppy love. As for Kif, that was real, concrete, grownup love.

I said to Fry, "Yeah, I kinda know what you mean."

He suddenly said, "Hey, what you got there?"

I looked around until I realised that he was pointing at the scrapbook from Leela's parents. I handed it over.

He flipped it open and read aloud, "Mutant to live on surface." He flipped some pages. "Sewer girl no more. Meet the new fate assignment officer who's taking New New York by storm." He turned some more pages. "Midnight escape for Leela. Daring break turns sewer pride into starship captain." He flipped through page after page of exultant praise for Leela. "What is all this?"

I turned to the last page, where the same article that we saw this morning was glued. Fry stared at it, and then turned back to the previous articles.

He looked up at me, and started, "You... you mean she... they've been writing articles about her, her whole life?"

"Yep."

"That's incredible."

He began reading one of the articles, but I took the book from him and shut it. "Fry, you'll have plenty of time to read that later. We got to get some sleep now."

"Yeah, you're right." He got up and drew the blinds. "Take the bed. I'll sleep on the floor."

"No, I'll sleep on the floor."

He gave me a weary look. "No, Amy. I don't want to argue about this. I'll be fine on the floor. Hell, this floor is more comfortable than a lot of beds I've been in. Sleep in the bed. I insist."

So I slept in the bed.

* * *

Actually, _slept_ would be stretching it. My body was so tired, but when I closed my eyes, all I could see was that lifeless eye.

I rolled all over the bed, thinking about all the ways I could have prevented it. All the things I should have said.

_Leela, take a gun._

_If you're not back in two hours, we're coming after you._

_Tell me where you're going._

I turned over again.

"Amy? You up?"

"Yeah."

Fry sat up and looked at me. It was still light outside, and the sunlight seeping through the blinds lit up the room a bit. He said, "What time is it?"

"Just after nine."

"Damn. We better hurry. I'm supposed to be there an hour early."

Now I was confused. "Didn't you say it was tomorrow?"

"No, it's today. Wednesday."

"It's Tuesday, Fry."

"It's still Tuesday?"

"Yeah. It's only been an hour."

He spread out on the floor and moaned, "Aw, geez! I'm never going to make it to tomorrow!"

"You can't sleep either?"

He shook his head.

I sat up and turned on the light. I reached down for him. He grabbed my hands, and I pulled him up onto the bed next to me.

He tilted his head over toward me, and then he pointed at my shoulder. "You've still got that scar."

I looked at his neck. "So do you."

We didn't say anything for a while. We just kind of watched one another.

Fry spoke. "Amy..."

"What?"

"I was kind of wondering something. Something about... you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"What is it?"

"Maybe this will sound a little odd, you know, under the circumstances. I just... I'm kind of interested in what the answer might be."

"What, Fry?"

"Did you and Leela ever..."

Despite myself, I started giggling. That _wasn't_ what I was expecting him to say.

He turned away. "Aw, forget it. It's stupid."

"Three times."

He turned back toward me, and then he started to giggle, "Seriously? Not all at once, right?"

I figured I'd tell him. He deserved to know.

So I began, "Once a few weeks after I met her, once about a year after that, and once more a few months ago."

"So, how was she?"

"Eeh, not that great. She wasn't very enthusiastic. I could tell it wasn't really her scene. Out of the times I remember, anyway. I was so wasted the second time, I don't remember it."

He said, "Yeah, I don't remember the second time I did it with her, either."

"There was something funny in there, though," I continued. "That last time - this was right after that whole bit with the tar pit of youth, right?"

"Yeah?"

"So most of us ended up a little younger, right? Well, we played a little game where she tried to seduce me and all that. She took me home with her, with me doing the whole nervous 'I'm not really sure if this is a good idea' bit, right? She kisses me, I become blinded by my passions, and we do it long and hard into the night, you know."

"Right," Fry concurred. "That old story."

"Exactly. So I rip off her clothes, she gives me a strapon, and I use it on her. And just as she's climaxing, she shouts out, 'Fry!'"

"_What?_" Between laughs, he added, "Really? No shit?"

"Swear to god," I insisted. "She says your name!"

"So what did you do?"

"Well, I stopped, of course. I look down, and she's holding her hands over her mouth, she's got the most mortified look on her face, and she turns this deep red. She looks up at me, and as soon as we make eye contact, I couldn't hold it in any more. I just burst out laughing."

Fry finished laughing and said, "Man, she couldn't have thought much of my manhood."

"Yeah, I said the same thing."

"What happened after that?"

I told him, "Well, I threatened to tell you, of course. She was all like, 'Don't you speak a _word_ of this!' That just cracked me up even more. I felt kinda bad later, about laughing in her face like that. But she saw the funny side eventually. Oh, man! I've heard all kinds of weird things in bed, but nobody's ever said a _guy's_ name to me!"

"Aw, man. That is too funny."

We had another long pause. Then Fry said, "Okay, we'd really better get some sleep this time." He rolled off the bed and onto the floor. "Sleep tight."

"Yeah, you too."

* * *

I think I managed to drift off a few times, but for the most part I was thinking about all the things that Leela and I had done together. As her father put it, she led quite a life.

The most striking thing I remembered was just nine days before that.

It was a Sunday morning, and I had to work on yet another component that they'd broken on one of their delivery joyrides. I'd spent a late Saturday on the fuel lines, and after a few hours' sleep, I was back in to give it another go.

Around eleven I finished patching up one of the lines and went back to the kitchen to fill up my coffee. Just then Leela waltzed in. Yes, she was doing an actual waltz. She grabbed me, spun me around, and sang, "Good morning, my talented coworker."

I slipped out of her arms and complained, "What's gotten into you? You been sniffing the fumes from Nibbler's litterbox again, or what?"

"Well, yes, that too. But isn't it amazing how a single, most delightful evening can change one's whole outlook on life?" She followed that with a little happy sigh.

"What happened last night? I thought you didn't have anything going on last night."

She answered, "I didn't. But then there was, I guess, a little change of plans."

"What? Some sort of sudden date?"

"Yep."

I guided her to the table. "Well, come _on_, girl! Spill it! Who with?"

She gave a little half smile and said to me, "You'll never guess."

I wasn't in the mood to guess, but I figured I'd just let her tell the story the way she wanted. "Somebody I know, then. I think we can rule out Zoidberg."

She rolled her eye. "Of _course_."

"I don't think it was Zapp Brannigan, either."

"_Definitely_ not him."

"No, of course not. That one guy at the gym with the shaved head? Scruffy? The guy who always hides behind trees when he sees you?"

She kept shaking her head.

"It _was_ a guy, right?"

She groaned. "Yes."

"Rrrgh! Who _was_ it, Leela?"

At that moment Fry walked in. "Hello there, beautiful." He bent down and kissed her on the lips.

She wrapped her arms around him, returned the kiss, and said, "Hello yourself. I had a wonderful time last night."

"I did too. I can't wait to do it again. And again, and again..."

"Oh, stop." She pushed him away, and he left for the hangar.

She turned back toward me. As she tilted her chair back, she held her arms behind her head and crossed her legs on the table. She gave me the same half smile.

And all I could say was, "No... fucking... _way_."

"Exactly."

"So? Come _on_, Leela! Tell me all about it! What remarkable thing did he do to sweep you off your feet?"

"Okay, okay." She put her feet back on the floor and leaned in toward me. "I went to a movie yesterday afternoon."

"He took you to a movie?"

"No. Fry's not in the story yet. I'm going to a movie on my own."

"Which one?"

"_Being John Malkovich's Head_."

"I liked that one."

"Yeah. Anyway -"

"Did you like it?"

She shook her head and held her hands out. "I haven't seen it yet. They've only started the trailers."

"Trailers. Got it."

"So then I see a silhouette walk up the aisle, and I'm thinking, _I know that silhouette_. I'm already sitting on the aisle, so I reach out and grab him."

"And he turned out to be some other guy."

"No, it was Fry. He says hi, and I aks him to sit with me. He says sure. He sits next to me, and then he leans over and whispers to me -"

"Oh, he whispered sweet nothings into your ear? That's so cute!"

"No, he whispered, 'I think this guy just came from the circus'. There was this fat guy sitting on the other side of him. So I laughed at that. Anyway, we saw the movie, and as it went along, we'd whisper jokes about it. Like... um... remember that one scene with all the Malkovich heads in the restaurant?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Fry goes, in Malkovich's head's voice, you know, 'Man, I should never have cold pizza before I go to bed!' And I just cracked up! I'm biting my tongue, trying not to laugh out loud in this theatre!"

"I'm not sure if it's that funny, Leela."

"It was at the time. So after the movie, I'm like, 'Want to grab something to eat?' So he says okay, and we end up at Johnny Carburetor's. Quit laughing."

"Sorry, it's just... _that's_ your big date?"

"Shut up. You ever have one of their avocado-raccoon burgers? That's something else. Anyway, we just kept doing that the whole time, you know, making jokes about everyone behind their back. It was hilarious! Like when I paid the bill -"

"_You_ paid the bill?"

"Some of us aren't like you."

I feigned pain. "That was just uncalled for!"

"Anyway, the waiter's like, 'I'll be back with your change,' and I lean over to Fry and go, 'And then I'll go home and soak my mother's feet and then cry myself to sleep wondering why I can't get a real job and not be stuck living with her!'"

"Aw Leela, you bitch! Curb thy venomous tongue!"

"I know! So Fry says that he wants to see _Planet of the Grapes_ -"

"Ugh. I don't want to see that."

"So I go, 'Wanna see it now?' He's like, 'Sure,' and so we go back and see that. And just as the trailers are starting, guess what happens!"

"You sneeze."

"No. Someone sits next to Fry, and it's the _same_ guy from the last movie!"

"Really?"

"Seriously! So Fry leans over to me and goes, 'Well, one more movie before I have to get back to the circus.' And I cracked up again! I'm doubled over in my chair, I can't stop laughing, and then I hear Fry start to laugh as well. I look up, and the guy's walking away and sitting off in the corner!"

"You scared him away?"

"We scared him away! And we kept on making jokes all through this movie, and after it was over, we went back over to Fry's building. We get in the elevator, and Fry punches the button for the top floor. I go, 'Fry, you don't live on the top floor,' and he just goes, 'I know.'"

"So that's where he romanced you!"

"Not yet. We're still just getting out of the elevator on the top floor. So he takes me over to the fire door, and we go up to the roof."

"And you kissed him under the stars."

"No, it was cloudy. Anyway, he goes over to the ledge, he holds a coin out, and he goes, 'Think I can hit that red car?' I say, 'Not a freaking chance.' And then he lets go of the coin."

"Yeah? Then what?"

"Well, we watch it fall, and then it disappears from view. Then we hear this car alarm."

"He hit the car?"

"No, the next one over. He turns to me and he says, 'That's the first time in a while that I've actually hit a car. Usually it just makes a dent in the pavement.' So he goes back over to the door."

"And it's locked."

"Exactly. He throws a shoulder at it, and nothing happens. Then I try to kick it down, and the door just _explodes_! Bits flying everywhere, and I'm so surprised I lose my footing and fall down the stairs! Fry rushes down, and he says, 'You okay, Leela?' I get up and tell him I'm fine, and then we go back out onto the roof."

"Whadja do then?"

"Well, Fry lies on the ground, looking up at the grey sky. I kind of crouch down over him, and then, well, I kiss him."

"No! _You?!_"

"I don't know. It just sort of... everything fell into place there. Right on that spot, he and I made love."

"One of the two of us has gone ga-ga. I'm pretty sure it ain't me."

"Shut _up_! So when we're done, we look up, and guess what we see."

"I don't know. The clouds had parted, revealing a grand vista of the Milky Way to adorn your evening."

"No, the cleaning bots had rebuilt the door. So Fry gets up and throws a shoulder at it again, with the same result. I kick it, and it shatters again. I slip again, but this time Fry's fast enough to grab me. But then we both went tumbling down the stairs. Anyway, we went back to Fry's apartment, and we did it twice more."

I stared at Leela for the longest time before I finally said, "Now I _know_ you're shitting me."

* * *

I heard sobs.

I peeked over the corner of the bed, but everything looked blurry. I realised I'd been crying. When I wiped the tears away, I saw Fry sitting up against the bed, crying as well. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he looked up, resting his hand atop mine.

It was only about 12:30.

Fry's left hand was moving around on the floor and stopped on the scrapbook. He looked down at it.

I turned the light on.

So he put the book onto the bed, and we read the story of Turanga Leela as told by the New New York _Sewer Observer_.

* * *

"Amy? Wake up!"

I sat up and looked around. "Hey Leela. How did you get in here?"

"I'm a figment of your imagination. By definition, I'm wherever you are."

"Oh. I guess that makes sense." I looked down, and Fry was asleep.

Leela said, "Don't worry about him. I'll visit his dream next."

"Okay. Umm... look, Leela. I'm sorry about killing you and everything."

"That's fine. It's nothing. Save your apologies for those who can act on them."

"What do you mean?"

"I think you know."

"Uh, sure. Oh... if you don't mind my aksing, what's death like?"

"They have a lot of rules, believe it or not."

"They do? What kind of rules?"

"Most of them are about how we interact with this Universe. Like, here, let me show you."

Without provocation, she jumped up, spun around, and kicked me in the face. I held up my hands and waited for the impact, but nothing happened. When I opened my eyes, I saw Leela standing on one foot, with her other leg extended toward my face. I turned around, and there was her boot behind me. She brought her leg back through my head and stood up as before.

I hadn't felt a thing.

"Wow," I muttered.

"Yeah. And I had to wait until you fell asleep before I could visit you. We can only visit the living in dreams, except in some very specific circumstances."

"That seems... reasonable. Who makes those rules?"

"Congress. We're democratic. We have a bicameral legislature, an executive office, and a court system, all of which try to meddle in one another's affairs."

"Just like the living."

"Exactly. Oh, one more thing. Would you find someone to watch over Nibbler? I mean, if you won't be able to, that's okay, but I just need to make sure someone does."

"Sure."

"Thanks. Well, I'd better get to Fry's dream before he wakes up. Catch you later."

With a little "Hyup," she jumped into Fry's brain.

* * *

"Amy? Wake up!"

I sat up and looked around. This time I was really awake.

I had a hand across one page of the scrapbook. It was an editorial about the dean at Mars U being a jerk, or something.

Fry was standing over me, and he told me, "I guess we fell asleep reading that."

"What... what time is it?"

"It's eight. We've got to be down there in two hours. I'm going to jump in the shower. You go next, and then... I don't know. You wouldn't have any funeral wear, would you?"

I thought a moment. "If we order online now, they should be here in time."

He replied, "That's a good idea." Only then did I notice his PC in the corner. When he woke it up, I saw that his wallpaper depicted Leela in her green one piece swimsuit.

I said, "Why did she like that one so much? I kept telling her to wear two pieces."

"She looked good in that."

"You thought she looked good in anything. You probably thought she looked good with Calculon's ears."

"Well, she did."

I chose a simple black velvet dress, and Fry picked out a black suit with a black shirt. Then he threw in a purple tie.

I was astonished. "A purple tie? With a black suit? Ch'uh, Fry! Now entering Clashville, population you!"

He leaped up and jabbed a finger into my face. "Look Amy, your intimacy with her may have just been for fun, but with me, it meant something! This is about the only way I have to give her a proper tribute!"

Only then did I realise. Purple, like Leela's hair.

He put his finger away and looked down. "Sorry."

"No, I'm sorry, Fry. I wasn't thinking."

"Well, anyway, let's make sure they get here on time. Man, this is going to be expensive."

I said, "I got it, Fry."

"Can you really afford all that?"

I just stared at him.

"Right, right. I'm gonna go... I'm gonna shower."

* * *

"Okay, I was wrong. It does look good. Here, let me get the tie."

I straightened his tie and tried to smooth down his hair, but it stayed as messy as ever.

We set out for the sewers.

As we descended the ladder, I said to Fry, "I had a dream about Leela."

"Really? Me too! Was yours about her kicking Santa Claus's ass and then taking me to bed?"

"Um, no. Mine was... different."

When we got to the lakeshore, Leela was in a clear plastic casket in front of rows of seats that some guys in suits and tophats were setting up. The Turangas were there, talking to Hermes.

When Mr Turanga saw us, he waved us over. "Good morning, kids. Did you sleep well?"

"No," we both answered in unison.

"Yeah, we didn't either."

Mrs Turanga hugged us. "You two look nice," she said.

I said, "So do you two." They were dressed a lot like us. Not a surprise, really. I couldn't really expect them to wear something besides black.

Hermes was explaining, "So people will be arriving at ten for de viewing. Den de services start at eleven."

I walked up to the casket and put a hand on it.

In her hands was a large bouquet of white roses. Otherwise, she looked as she did a day ago in the hangar.

Another hand pressed up against the opposite side of the casket. I looked up and saw Fry looking at her.

I suddenly thought of something Fry had talked about back in the medbay. "Fry..."

"Yeah?"

"Remember when you said she looked like she had unfinished business?"

"Yeah."

"What did you mean?"

"You really never read _Hamlet_?"

"Never read _Hamlet_."

"Well, apparently in Shakespeare's time, they believed that if someone died but had... I guess... unfulfilled obligations, their ghost would continue to roam around until their work was done."

I looked down at her again and aksed, "You think she had unfulfilled obligations?"

"I don't know. Nibbler, maybe?"

"Oh no! Nibbler! We left him on the ship! Hermes! Where's Nibbler!"

Hermes came over and said, "I brought Nibbler home. LaBarbara and Dwight been taking care of him."

Fry and I looked at one another. I said, "Do they want to keep him?"

He put a hand on the casket and took a deep breath. "I don't know if dat's possible, Amy. Leela didn't leave a will, so everything she owned should go to de next of kin."

I looked over at her parents. They were talking to the undertakers.

He continued, "But de law doesn't acknowledge mutants. Officially, she was an orphan." Then he went on about some sort of form we'd have to file to claim her stuff, and if nobody else filed one, we'd get it all automatically. "If dey get more dan one, well, a long legal battle ensues."

I looked at Fry, and he looked back. I think he was thinking the same thing I was.

Hermes resumed, "I've taken de liberty of preparing the A414-22 in your names - it just needs your signatures. Hang on, let me get it." He walked away toward a truck parked at the roadside.

When I looked back at Fry, he had turned away and was sitting on the ground, looking out at the lake. His head was in his hands.

I knelt down at his side. "Fry, what is it?"

"I can't go through Leela's stuff!"

"Of course you can."

"I know what it all means! I won't be able to look at a single thing without seeing what it meant to her! I can't handle that!"

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, thinking about how much we'd been doing that lately. I looked into his eyes and said, "Fry, you're the only one who can do it. You'll know what she would have wanted her parents to keep... what she would have wanted me to keep... what she would have wanted you to keep."

"I guess that's true. Not going to be easy, though."

"What, like it's been a walk in the park so far?"

He looked at me again. "Yeah, you're right."

I helped him up, and Hermes handed us the papers. We signed at the blanks where he'd placed his little coloured labels: _FRY, SIGN HERE_ and _AMY, SIGN HERE_.

"Right den." He peeled the labels off and folded up the form. "For now, nobody touch Leela's stuff. We'll hear from dem on Friday morning, about the time you two get back from your next mission."

"What mission?"

"You've got an overnight shipment to Qwerty 12 tomorrow."

I said, "Don't we get any bereavement leave?"

Hermes chuckled. "Don't be silly. Regulations are very clear. Death of a coworker, two days bereavement." He walked away, calling, "I'll go file de papers."

We looked round. By now everything was set up.

There were rows upon rows of white folding chairs streaming back to the road. There must have been at least a couple thousand seats.

Fry said to me, "I didn't know Leela even knew this many people."

The casket was on a long table at the top of a ridge a couple of metres in height. Another, lower table before the casket had been covered with white and purple flowers. A podium stood behind the casket, with more flowers adorning it.

To the right of the casket was a large image of Leela. It was a portrait of her standing under a tree. Atop her head was a crown of white flowers. She held more white flowers to her heart.

It was the same picture I saw in the Turangas' house, the one I'd taken. I remembered calling her over when I got a new camera. I took a lot of pictures of her in my apartment, and then some more in a park.

That picture was the only good one in the lot. I even remembered sending it to her.

"Amy? Fry?"

It was the Turangas. Mr Turanga held out a couple of newspapers. "We thought you might like to see these."

One was an extra edition published last night.

**TURANGA LEELA: 2975-3003**  
_Space battle claims least mutated mutant_

To the side of the headline was the same flowers in the hair picture.

The other was today's edition.

**Leela to be submerged**  
_Thousands expected at memorial for courageous pilot_

Fry said to me, "I didn't know Leela even knew _that_ many people."

I read from the article, "Services will be led by coworkers Philip J Fry and Amy Wong, and parents Turanga Morris and Munda. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations be made to the Turanga Leela Memorial Scholarship Fund."

A scholarship fund?

As I looked up, a long line of mutants had formed to pay their respects. Fry clapped his hands together and said, "Come on everyone! Places! Let's make a certain one eyed wonder proud!"

* * *

Most of the people had kind words for the Turangas, and at least a warm embrace for us. A few also offered their condolences to Fry and me, leaving me to marvel once again at the press coverage Leela's life received down here.

When Hermes returned, he brought LaBarbara and Dwight. Dwight had Nibbler in his arms. I bent down to greet Nibbler, aksing, "Has he been a good... whatever he is?"

Dwight said, "Yeah, he's been good. He knocks stuff over a lot, but he can't help it. And we've moved all the breakables up high."

"That's good. Listen, Dwight, things aren't settled yet, but we're trying to work out the, um -"

"The A414-22? Pops told me about that. If that works out, can we keep him?"

"Sure you can."

I looked up and saw Hermes burning Leela's timecard, saying something about an old tradition.

Nibbler started to squeal and reach toward the casket. I said to him, "Oh, you want to say goodbye to mama, don't you? Here you go." Dwight handed him to me, and I held him up so he could see Leela.

He held a hand, or paw, or whatever, up to the plastic. He looked at Leela, then at Fry, and then at Leela again. He closed his eyes and sniffled.

I gave him back to Dwight, who said, "Thanks, Amy."

Hermes rounded up the family and took them to their seats.

A few minutes later, we saw Zoidberg rush up to us. He announced, "My friends! I have received wonderful information! My medical encyclopædias indicate that ibuprofen is indeed not fatal to humans, it isn't! It's not my fault already! Hooray!" Then he looked down at Leela. "But she remains deceased! Ohhh, now I'm sad again! My euphoria had a very short lifespan!"

He trudged away and took a seat next to Hermes. I saw them talking, and then they hugged one another.

Fry said, "Hey, Bender. How was Vegas?"

I turned around and, sure enough, I saw Bender. "Ah, I lost. Had to sell all the stuff I looted from you. Hey, that reminds me, can I loot you again tonight?"

"Sure, Bender. Anything you want."

"You wanna go get drunk after this shindig is over?"

Fry looked down at Leela's body. "Sometimes that sounds like a good idea."

"All right. See you a little later, bro."

When Scruffy and the Professor, along with Cubert, arrived a bit afterward, our corporate family was complete. But still...

I turned to Fry and aksed, "Do you think Kiffy will be here?"

"Of course," he told me.

"How can you be so sure?"

He pointed. There, in the receiving line, was Kif, in his dress uniform. I called to him, "Kif!"

"Amy!"

I ran to him, and then tripped on my heels. He picked me up and held me firmly. I rested my chin on his shoulder.

"Oh, Amy," he said. "I'm sorry I couldn't be here when you needed me the most."

"It's okay, Kiffy. You're here now. Besides, Fry kept me company overnight."

"That's good."

I brought Kif up to the front, and he greeted Fry. "Amy tells me you were able to console her since Leela's passing?"

Fry told him, "Well, I think I was the one who needed consoling. Amy's strong. She could handle it."

"In any case, thank you. Having you around meant a lot to her, and to me."

"It's nothing. I couldn't have dreamt of doing any less." He looked around. "Is Brannigan here?"

"No, the _ignoramus_ departed early for winter leave. No one has been able to track him down."

Kif and I went up to the casket. He placed a gloved hand on the wall and looked in at the genetic donor of our children.

"Cruel the fates are, Amy. She should have had many more years of thrilling space journeys to look forward to."

He heaved a heavy sigh. This one wasn't as cute as his normal heavy sighs.

He took my hand and said to me, "Oh, Amy, how I dread the day when I must step before a sealed glass vessel and see your own static visage being consigned to eternity! I only pray that the richly woven tapestry of your own life does not end with a similar fray toward which you inexorably move even now! I am so deeply distraught at the mere thought!"

I shook my head, saying, "Kiffy, that was beautiful, in a strange sort of way. When did you become a poet?"

"Amy, I become a poet every time you enter the room. And as you exit, a poet I cease to be. Any lyrical qualities I may appear to have originate in you, not me."

I was tearing up again. During this week I have to have filled up my tear quota for next year. Kif's amateur poetry, evocative as it was, was still evoking sadness, an emotion I had enough of on my own.

I said, "Kif, what would you do without me? Or what would I do without you?"

"Perhaps that is a question that is best left unaksed. I think we cannot know the answer until the time comes."

"Well then, I hope we never find out."

"So do I."

* * *

"If I could aks everyone to find a seat, we can get started."

Fry was standing at the podium, looking down at Leela. I led Kif to the first row, where we had seats set aside next to Leela's parents. He held out a hand and whispered, "Kif Kroker. I'm Amy's boyfriend."

They shook his hand. "Turanga Morris. This is Munda."

"You have my deepest condolences. Your daughter was a most accomplished leader."

"Thank you."

Fry said, "Thank you all for joining us this morning. We have a number of speakers today, so I'd like to try and move things along quickly. My name is Philip J Fry. I was a colleague, and very close friend, of Miss Turanga Leela."

Fry's speech was extraordinarily moving. Later, I made sure to get the transcript from the newspaper.

"I made few, if any, friends in the 20th century. When I arrived one year from the end of the 30th century, I resolved that I would not make the same mistake again.

"The very same person who caused me to see that became one of the most important people in my life. Yes, she was my boss. Yes, her word was law on the ship.

"But the saying 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' did not apply to her. Not once did she deliberately misuse her authority or act in any way detrimental to our mission.

"She made mistakes. We all do. But she neither dwelled on them nor tried to hide them. She acknowledged them and sought to prevent their recurrence. I certainly can't recall ever seeing her make the same mistake twice.

"Seeing that in her made me want to do the same.

"Her greatest asset wasn't her piloting ability, her physical strength, her Arcturan kung fu mastery, her decision making, or even her compassion.

"It was her inspirational qualities.

"She inspired everyone around her to be something more than they were before. Once, I was a chronic screwup. Now, dammit, I'm a chronic screwup who's saved the world.

"This Universe was a richer place with her. However, it doesn't necessarily follow that this Universe must be a poorer place without her.

"Let us not waste her memory. Let us embrace what made her unique and strive to improve ourselves. Let us aspire to heights that others may think we cannot reach, just as she did.

"She demanded the best from her crew, and from herself. Let us demand the best from ourselves.

"That is the debt we owe to you, Leela. We owe you our best."

* * *

After that, it was all a blur.

Fry introduced me, and on my way up, I gave Fry a big hug and whispered in his ear, "That was really something, Fry."

"It wasn't much."

"Leela would have loved it."

My speech, of course, was nowhere near that level. I just talked about some of the things Leela and I had done together, and about how energetic she was. On my way down, Fry, Kif, and Mrs Turanga all said it was moving, but I just wanted to shout at them, _Quit being so polite, dammit!_

I was really impressed with the way Fry handled the day. He acted as kind of a master of ceremonies by introducing each speaker. I choked up many times during the day, but I never saw Fry lose his composure.

Mr Turanga followed me. His speech was absolutely heart rending. He told of the difficulty with which they left Leela on the steps of the orphanarium, and the joy of their reunion so many years later. He closed with, "Leela, we know how lonely you felt for so long. We hope that, considering the person you've become, you'll agree that it was worth it."

After that there was a long series of mutants who spoke about their meetings with Leela or the effect that she had on their lives. There was the newspaper writer who interviewed her, the photographer who took pictures of her through drainage grates, several people who named children after her, and even the paper boy we'd encountered the previous day.

He said, simply, "I never met you, Leela, but I thought you should know that when you went up to the surface, you took me along. You took all of us along."

Finally, Fry returned to the podium. "I have one more announcement I'd like to make. As some of you may know, in the hours since Leela's passing, we established the Turanga Leela Memorial Scholarship Fund. This fund will provide scholarship opportunities for the most promising students in sewer high schools to study at four year colleges on other planets. With your help, we've already collected nearly eight thousand dollars. Please speak to Mr and Mrs Turanga if you would like to contribute. Thank you."

* * *

Hermes, Zoidberg, Bender, Fry, Kif, and I lifted the casket and carried it to the shores of the lake. Naturally, we had to avoid the water, but we placed it on land's edge and let it slide into the deep.

Scruffy played "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipe.

Fry whispered, "Goodbye, Leela."

Bender added, "May a chorus of angels remove all your clothes."

* * *

I was sitting at the conference table when Leela walked in, saying, "Hey, how's it going?"

I turned around, but she'd already gone to the kitchen. I called after her, "Hi Leela. What's going on?"

"Oh, nothing much." She returned in short order, carrying her coffee cup. She placed it down on the table with a small _clink_ before she sat down. "That was a nice ceremony today. I was quite moved."

"Thanks. We weren't really sure what you would have wanted."

"Well, to be honest, I thought it was too sad. It needed more jokes. More levity."

"Dj'uh! It's a _funeral_, Leela. It's supposed to be sad."

"Why didn't you tell him?"

"Who? What?"

She blew her bangs off to the side. "You _know_."

A thought struck me. I reached out for her coffee cup. My hand passed right through it.

I looked up at her. "So how come you don't fall through the floor?"

She fell through the floor.

"See, I could if I wanted. But I thought that might have a detrimental effect on our conversation."

I twisted my head around. I didn't see her anywhere.

Then she jumped up through the floor and landed on the table. She bent down and leaned toward me. Her face was centimetres from mine.

"Amy, don't hold things from Fry. I tried it. Look where it got me."

I was staring into her lifeless eye.

* * *

I opened my eyes. I was in my own bed, in my own apartment. I rolled over and landed on top of Kif.

He cried out, "Not now, Amy! How can you even think of such a thing in these circumstances?"

I stammered, "No, no, that's... no, Kif, I was..."

He sat me up, turned on the light, and looked in my eyes. "What, Amy? Were you having a dream?"

I nodded.

"Would you like to tell me?"

I nodded again.

He looked at me.

I sighed and told him.

After I finished, he was quiet for a minute. Then he said, "'Lifeless eye'?"

I nodded. "When she died, she didn't close her eye. It was still staring at me, Kif. I can still see it now. It was..." My whole body shook. I drew my knees up to my chin and wrapped my arms around my legs.

He looked away, and then back at me again. "What do you have to tell Fry?"

I closed my eyes and covered them with my hands.

"You can't tell me?"

I shook my head.

"That's okay. It's still early. Do you want to try to go back to sleep?"

I hesitated. Then, "Yes."

"Okay. We'll go back to sleep."

* * *

After that I couldn't fall asleep. Eventually the Sun came up, and I got up and went to the window.

It had snowed in the city a week ago, but several days of mild weather had melted most of it away. Off in the distance I saw the Robot Arms building. I wondered what Fry and Bender had done all night.

Fry seemed to be handling this surprisingly well. I tried to put myself in his place. For years he had felt certain that she was perfect for him. At the same time, he knew what she thought of him.

He thought he knew, anyway.

If I was Fry, what would I have given to discover exactly what her feelings were for me? Fry knew, at least, that she did like him; he would always have her as a friend. But he thought he could have her as something more.

For the longest time, Leela wasn't sure that this was the case. It was the uncertainty that Fry couldn't deal with.

If he was continually picking petals from the proverbial daisies, every time he must have ended up with a burnt-off half of a petal, leaving him in that empty netherworld between _she loves me_ and _she loves me not_.

When he finally got a taste of life with Leela, it must have been like tasting a drop of mineral water after a week crawling through the deserts of the greater Sahara.

But one drop was all he was permitted.

It must have been agonising.

I watched the streets begin to fill up with traffic. After a while, I felt Kif's arm over my shoulder. He said, "You'd better get into the shower now. I don't want you to be late for work."

"Sure."

"When will you be home tonight?"

"I think we've got an overnight shipment today."

"I see. Well, I shall anticipate your return most eagerly."

* * *

I poured some coffee and sat at the conference table. Just then, the door opened behind me. I jumped.

"Morning Amy," Fry said. "Looks like you didn't do a lot of sleeping either."

Bender trailed in behind him and sat opposite me. "Yeah, you shoulda been with us last night. We drank, we threw bottles off of rooftops, we did all that stuff. Yep. That's what we did. Right Fry?"

Fry returned, and he was staring into his coffee cup. "Um, yeah. That's what we did, all right."

Hermes and the Professor came in shortly afterward. The Professor declared, "Good news everyone! We..." He looked around. "Aren't we missing someone?"

Fry piped up, "Yeah, where's Zoidberg?"

The Professor responded, "No, no, he's at an art class. No, don't we have some sort of weird lady who flies the ship or something?"

We all stared.

Then he turned to me. "Oh, there you are, Amy. Didn't see you there."

Hermes said, "Anyway, as I'm sure you're all aware, this will be Amy's first flight as captain, so let's all give her our support." He handed a brown envelope to Fry. "It goes to de executive council of de planet Qwerty 12, de planet of de shrews."

Fry examined the envelope, and then he said, "Wait. Is that shrews like the rodent, or shrews like the nagging housewife?"

"Some of each," Hermes shrugged. "Off you go!"

* * *

We had another long flight today. It would be about eleven hours each way, and that gave us even more time to reflect.

After we lifted off, Fry said, "You know, it kind of feels good to be getting back to work. I mean, I couldn't keep sitting around doing nothing."

From the opposite side of the bridge, Bender added, "Yeah, and we couldn't keep drinking and throwing bottles off rooftops either. You know. Like we did last night." He turned back to some displays on the wall. "Yep. That's what we did."

I said, "Yeah, I guess it's good to kind of get back to normal. As normal as we can, anyway."

Fry looked over. "I know what you mean. It's so weird to see you sitting in that chair."

"It's so weird to _be_ sitting in this chair. I mean, it just feels like I'm... you know... I'm watching the ship until she gets back."

He leaned toward me and looked me in the eyes. "Amy, it's your ship. You've got to think of it as your ship now."

"I guess."

When Bender made us lunch, Fry and I found that it was almost as good as the breakfast he'd prepared the previous day. After that short conversation, we'd been silent all through the morning and at the lunch table. When Fry and I went back to the bridge, he cleared his throat.

I looked up at him.

"Oh, nothing," he murmured. "I was just..."

I said, "So what about Bender? He's actually making good food now."

"Yeah. He is."

"It's almost as though he... you know... he actually misses her."

He said to me, "Actually Amy, he - don't let him know I told you this - but, well, you know what we really did last night?"

"Yeah, I thought you guys were making up something."

"We were. Well, I mean, we did drink. That part was true. But we spent all night just sitting up and telling stories about her."

"Really? You did?"

"Yeah. He, well, I knew he thinks of me as a friend, but it turns out he felt the same way about Leela."

That didn't sound like the Bender I knew. I said, "But he always argued with her, and complained, and he was so mean to Nibbler..."

"Yeah, but that's just how he expressed it," Fry explained. "I mean, robots have this thing about not showing emotion, especially not for humans. He just puts on this manbotly front, but he's hurting inside. Just like all of us."

I shook my head. "I just wish I'd known sooner."

"Me too. Just, you know, keep this under your hat, okay?"

"Of course."

He aksed, "So are we there yet?"

"No, we're still about seven hours out."

"Good thing I brought some reading material, then."

I looked down at his chair. The scrapbook was sitting in it.

He said, "Oh, and you left your other track suit at our place, too."

* * *

We read from the scrapbook again that day. We tried to figure out where we'd fallen asleep the other night, but we just decided to start reading at New Year's 3000.

We read the sewer reporters' accounts of Leela's various exploits. As the day wore on, we moved on to more and more recent articles. We turned the page, and Fry froze.

He read, "'I think Fry's the one'."

He closed his eyes, and I squeezed his hand. We read the interview.

* * *

**SO:** _Well, Fry has finally won you over. How did he do it?_

**Leela:** _[laughs]_ "Won me over." You know, that's not really what it feels like. When I think about someone winning me over, I have more an idea of a candlelight dinner, or a walk under the stars. That sort of thing. It didn't happen that way. Fry, I don't think, was even trying to win me over, not that night anyway. We were just kind of hanging out, as friends. But, well, when we were on the roof, and I looked down at him, it just felt like the right thing to do.

**SO:** _I guess we can always expect you to do things a little differently._

**Leela:** I guess so. I mean, I can imagine our grandkids saying, "Grammy, how did you and Grampa Fry get together?" Who would have thought my answer would be, "We got stuck on the roof and fell down a flight of stairs"?

**SO:** _You're already thinking about grandchildren?_

**Leela:** Well... yeah. I am. When I think of all that we've been through together, all that he's done for me, all those times he tried to sweep me off my feet... it's overwhelming.

**SO:** _If he proposed to you tonight, what would you say?_

**Leela:** Honestly, I would probably check him for brain slugs! _[laughs]_ I mean, that would be so unlike him. But I guess I... well, I really think he's the one. If he actually got up the nerve, I would say yes.

* * *

When I looked up, Fry's eyes were closed again. A single tear ran down the right side of his face. I looked up, and I saw Bender standing behind the couch. He had a hand on Fry's shoulder.

Bender moved his hand and said, "Aw, you and your stupid emotions make me sick!"

I looked at my wrist. It was about 18:30. "Bender, why don't you go make us dinner?"

"Shove it! I don't need this crap! If you want something to eat, why don't you just take a big bite out of my shiny metal ass!" He stormed out of the bridge.

After the door slid shut, I whispered, "Thanks, Bender."

* * *

He did make us dinner, and it was a good chicken cordon bleubird.

Before long, we had landed, and Fry grabbed the package. He stepped toward the door.

"Hang on, Fry," I said.

He turned and looked at me.

"You've got your communicator?"

He held it up.

"You've got the clipboard?"

He held it up.

"You've got the map?"

He held it up. "I'll be fine, Amy. Calm down. I'll call you if anything goes wrong."

He left the bridge, and I watched him disappear into downtown.

It looked like it was about noontime in Dvorak City, Qwerty 12's capital. It looked like a desert planet, yellow sands rolling in large dunes in surrounding directions, underneath a faintly orange sky. The planet's orange sun baked down on us; Qwerty 12 orbited so close that even the K star's feeble light made this a hot planet.

Some fairly large rats were running from building to building. Perhaps their bodies couldn't stand the heat outside. The ship's thermometer said that it was 309 kelvins outside. That was hot, but Fry could probably handle it.

I got a call. "What?"

"Amy! I need your help!"

I jumped up. "Fry! Where are you?"

He was breathing heavily, as though he was running. "They're chasing me! Get a weapon! I'll be there in, like, one minute!" He clicked off.

I grabbed a laser pistol and jumped down the steps.

I didn't see anything unusual in the city.

Then I saw him. He was running toward me, with the clipboard and the map under one arm. He looked over his shoulder. Behind him on that street were a number of rats, and some women, chasing after him. The women appeared to be wielding some sort of weapon, perhaps blernsball bats.

I looked down at my hand. It was shaking violently.

Fry had a considerable lead. When he reached me, he grabbed my hand and pulled me up the steps. "Come on, let's get out of here!"

I powered up and lifted off. We had just cleared the atmosphere when Fry looked up from one of his displays. "Bogeys on our six!" He leapt up and left the bridge, saying, "I'm taking the turret!"

"Whoseys on our what?" I aksed.

They started firing. I counted eight on our tail. Then I saw four more race around and line up in front of us.

I put my headset on and keyed the mike. "Fry! In front!"

"I got them."

He took out one of them, and I flew through its débris cloud.

I called, "I think that's scrambled their formation. See how many more you can take out."

"Rog," he answered.

They resumed firing. I went into a roll and dived to the south. Then, some more of them soared over our back and turned around, flying right down our nose.

I shouted, "They're too agile! We'll have to try something else!"

One of them exploded.

"Good shot!" I said to Fry.

"That wasn't me."

I felt sweat running down my face. The external thermometer was over 400 K.

I realised how much closer we were to Qwerty 12's parent star.

I dived even closer. As I did, we narrowly missed another of their shots. Fry hit one more of them. Then, one of the ones above us blew up.

I gunned the engines. On an impulse, I pushed the yoke hard to port. Another red beam blasted past our starboard flank.

Suddenly, everything became hazy. I could hear a hissing behind me, and then Bender saying, "I got it!" There was a metallic clang.

Now I was looking straight into a white fog. "I can't see anything!"

"Pull up!" Fry called.

I did, and I saw a bright flash underneath our bow.

"Seven more!" Fry said. "Six now!"

A fan started up behind me. I couldn't see out the windshield, and my radar display was fogged up. I wiped it off and saw six blips, one approaching from each direction.

The one behind us blew up. I reversed the engine, and in front of us, the remaining five all flew past one another. Only three of them flew away.

In a moment, I saw another of them disappear from the screen. Fry said, "Two more now!"

I saw a big orange glow flash past on our starboard. I turned in that direction.

Fry said, "Hey, can you turn up the air conditioner?"

"Where are the other two?"

"They're at our nine o'clock."

"The hell does that mean?"

"It means port."

By now I could start to see outside. The remaining two were coming around from port toward our nose. One of them exploded.

I dived downward. I saw the last one chasing us on the radar. We exchanged fire a couple of times until Fry finally hit him.

"Anybody else?" I aksed.

Fry called down, "I don't see any."

"Okay, let's get out of here."

"Set course for Earth!" Fry yelled.

He entered the bridge. "Sorry, that was all my fault."

I aksed him, "What was it all about?"

"Oh, I tracked sand into their council chambers. They started chasing after me with these rolling pins. They were all shouting, 'We just vacuumed!'"

"Well, we got out of there. Anyone hurt?"

Fry shook his head. Bender said, "Nope."

"Any damage?"

Bender was looking at one display. "The steam cover that came off has to be bolted down. And I'm getting indications of two ruptured cereal boxes."

"Okay, men. Let's get to work."

* * *

One cereal cleanup later, we were all on the bridge when Bender sat up and said, "Amy, I got something to tell you."

"What's that?"

"Well, I didn't think that you'd prove a competent captain. I thought you'd break a nail and then run off into your quarters all boo-hooing. But today, I realised something. You may never be half the captain Leela was, but with the kind of crew you have, it doesn't matter."

He got up, and on his way out, he pointed at Fry and added, "Except for this guy. He's an idiot."

Fry said, "He is right about one thing. I am an idiot."

I turned and said to him, "Don't be ridiculous. Look at how you got us out of that."

"Well, why didn't I just take off my shoes when I went inside? If I'd done that, we'd never have had to run away!"

"Fry, quit beating yourself up. It could have happened to anybody. But the way you asserted yourself at our escape... that was commendable."

He turned away, waving a hand at me.

I continued, "I mean it. The last couple of days, you've... I don't know... you seem like a different person."

"I know! The irony is just so awful!"

I didn't answer him. In a moment he said, "You don't know what I mean, do you?"

"I guess not."

"What did Leela always say about me? She always had the same criticism, right? Always that I needed to be more _mature_!" He stood up. "I think there was only one possible thing that could happen that would make me mature enough for her. How ironic is it that it would be her death?"

He walked out of the bridge.

* * *

I threw the sheets aside and shouted, "I'll never fall asleep again in my entire life!"

When I walked into the bridge, Leela was sitting in her chair. She turned around and said, "Hey."

"Hey."

"That was an exciting escape today."

"Oh, it was probably nothing compared to some of the things you've done."

"Don't be so sure."

I sat at the couch to forward. I rested my chin on the back of it and said to her, "Why do you keep bothering my dreams like this?"

"Shouldn't you be aksing yourself that question?"

"And every time I try to get something out of you, you twist it around and make it into a t'reaking riddle! What the hell is that supposed to mean? What do I know what you're here for?"

"G'uh, Amy! This is all you!"

"_What?_"

"Did you really think I was some spooky voice beyond the grave? Of course not!"

"But... Fry said..."

"Said what? That shit about 'unfinished business'? He's just justifying his existence! Look," she stood up, "being a captain is all about making the right decisions. So far, you've done well. You've made all the right decisions. Except one."

"What?"

She tossed her arms up and spun around, shaking her head. "Is none of this getting through to you, Amy? Don't tell me you're that dense. I mean, do I have to stand here and draw you a flipping _diagram_?"

"What?"

"Say _what_ again, Amy! I dare you! Say _what_ one more goddam time!"

I saw that my hands were in front of my face now. I lowered them.

In a huff, she bent down and picked up an easel and a marker. The easel had a large pad of paper clipped to it.

I hadn't seen them when I entered.

She produced some quick sketches: a naked woman with legs spread, a rectangle with the word _SOAP_ in it, and two sticks with a salt shaker over them.

She pointed to the first one and said, "Come." The next, "Clean." The last, "To Fry."

She snapped the cap back onto the marker and looked at me again.

I said, "I don't know if I can."

"If you don't, what will happen when he finds out?"

"But... how could he find out?"

"Oh, come on. Did you even look at Blake's body? He didn't even _have_ any weapons!"

"Shit. You're right."

"So. Regardless of whether it's the right thing to do - which it is - you've still got to cover your ass. Either way, you have to tell him."

She looked at me intently.

With her lifeless eye.

* * *

I opened one eye, then the other. I turned on the light in my quarters.

I was still feeling jumpy. I shivered as I climbed out of bed.

I walked to the bridge, my bare feet stepping gingerly on the frigid floor.

When the door opened, I saw Fry standing at the bow, looking outside. He turned around. "Hi, Amy. I just... I couldn't sleep."

"Yeah, me neither." I walked up to the couch, but an uneasy feeling made me decide not to sit there. I leaned up against the windshield instead.

"It's very peaceful out here," he said. "Out here, things happen over thousands or millions of years. Instead of seconds and minutes, you know, like we're used to."

"_I_ did it, Fry!"

He turned to me and stopped when he saw me. He reached out, took my hand, and said, "Yeaigh! Your hand's cold! Been sleeping in the freezer?"

"Feels like it."

He cupped his hands over mine and exhaled onto them. It didn't help, but the thought was nice.

As he gripped my hands, he looked into my eyes and said to me, "So what is it?"

I fell silent. _Come on Amy girl, say it_, I thought.

"It's okay. You can tell me."

So I told him the whole story. I told him about my shaking hand. I told him about hearing her say, "I don't got him." I told him about raising the gun and closing the trigger. I told him about how everything simply froze when that beam strayed to the right and cut into Leela's arm. I told him about watching helplessly as the beam carved that horrible zigzag into her back.

After I finished, I collapsed wearily into his arms.

He said, weakly, "My god. Amy... I'm so sorry."

"Why? What for?"

He answered, "Just, you know, just that you had to go through all that. That's just... it's incomprehensible to me. I don't know how anyone can deal with that. You're, well, you're far stronger than I would be."

He sat me down on the couch and continued, "I had no idea. I just... why didn't you tell me in the first place?"

"I didn't know how. I mean, _Hey Fry, I killed your girlfriend_? You wouldn't have reacted well to that."

He laughed a little bit at that and said, "Well, you've already told me you slept with her. Right?"

Despite myself, I laughed a bit as well. "Yeah."

"Besides, if we're going to be a good crew, we got to be straight with one another. I mean, did Leela ever lie to us? Of course not. We have to be the same way."

"Yeah," I responded. "'We owe her our best'."

We sat there for a time. Fry began, "Look, I've been thinking. Thinking about how to, you know, remember Leela. But I could only come up with one idea."

"What's that?"

He shook his head. "It's nothing, really. I thought maybe we could name this ship after her."

Tears came to my eyes, yet again. I held his hand and said, "Fry... that's perfect."

* * *

I went back to my quarters shortly afterward, but I didn't get any sleep.

We landed at about 09:30. We went down the steps and saw Hermes waiting for us.

He said, "Amy, Fry, you have a fax waiting for you."

We stopped and looked at one another.

He said, "It's from de Department of Records."

He held it out, and Fry took it.

Fry read, "Mr Fry and Ms Wong: The New New York Department of Records wishes to confirm receipt of your A414-22 Orphan Redistribution Request form as regards the late Ms Turanga Leela, deposited and signed for by Mr Hermes Conrad. As of the legal deadline of 09:00 New New York time on Friday 16 December 3003, no other such form has been received from any other individuals in reference to Ms Turanga. Consequently, the Department of Records confirms you as the legal executors of the estate of Ms Turanga Leela, as acknowledged by the approved A414-22 form, copy enclosed. Respectfully, Ms Dianne Conrad, Grand High Bureaucrat, New New York Department of Records."

Fry scratched his head. "I think they're saying we can touch her stuff."

"Yes," Hermes answered. "You can start with dat box dere." He pointed to the one she got from Canopus 5.

Fry walked over to it and swallowed. "Well, here goes nothing."

He tore open one end and pulled out some sort of foam mold, along with Leela's green coat.

Up until then, I had never wondered what had happened to it. I didn't piece together that she'd left with it and come back without it.

"Wow," Fry said. "What are these?"

I looked down. The mold had four large silver rifles fitted into it. I picked up one and looked at the side. It read _Smith and Wesxax EMP_.

"Fry, these are EMP guns."

He looked at me blankly.

"Electromagnetic pulse?"

"Hold it. Electromagnetic pulse guns? Do you know what this means?"

I shook my head.

Fry picked up another of the rifles. "She was really going to do it."

"Do what?"

"That's why she met that guy on Canopus 5! She wanted these! She was serious!"

"About what, Fry?"

He looked up at me. "Well, one night last week, we were decorating her apartment, and I started talking about how different Xmas is now. I said something like, 'Man, in the 20th century, people wouldn't have just sat idly by if some maniacal Santa came by trying to kill everyone.'

"I told her all about the 20th century people who didn't like the way things were and fought back. Like the disgruntled postal workers, or the people outside abortion clinics who called the doctors murderers and then murdered them.

"And she was all like, 'Fry, that's it! We have to kill Santa!' I aksed her how, and she said she didn't know. But then she got some paper and started to sketch out this plan. She said, 'About the only way to do it would be with EMPs. He's a robot, so that's his top vulnerability. You'd need someone to create a diversion, and then someone would sneak up behind him and unleash some freaky EMP action on his ass.'

"So she stands over the paper for a minute, and then she's like, 'But where would we get the EMPs? They're banned on most planets. I could aks around, I guess.' And then she rolled up the paper."

I stared at Fry and said, "You mean she was actually going to try to kill Santa Claus?"

He shrugged. "I figured it was just talk."

* * *

We spent the rest of the day cleaning out Leela's quarters on the ship, her locker in the hangar, and her apartment.

And as the day went on, the more the Santa strike seemed to make sense to me.

Once we packed up all the stuff for Leela's parents, I called Kif over, and Fry found Bender. The four of us began to discuss the mission.

The plan that Leela had drawn up, which we found rolled up under her bed, was a good starting point. It depended upon someone - Leela had tentatively tagged Fry for this role - capturing Santa's attention initially.

He tends to focus on one person at a time, so with him occupied, Leela would have driven in from behind and fired the EMP blast to take Santa down temporarily.

Then, they would have to remove his head. Once that was done, they could use a strong ultraviolet light to erase his EPROM.

We drew up improvements throughout the night. Kif caught a lot of potential pitfalls. Bender knew a lot about Santa's behaviour based upon their last attempt to destroy him.

It was starting to look as though the four of us could really do it.

* * *

When we told Hermes of our idea to rename the ship, he said he'd be honoured to file the necessary papers.

So it was that this morning, Fry and I cut out stencils and painted the name in black letters on each side of the aft end: PES _Turanga Leela_.

As we were examining our work, Fry whispered to me, "I can hear Zapp now. 'Kif, this won't be my first time conducting a hard dock with _Leela_!'"

The illicit EMP rifles were hidden inside the ship, along with plenty of other "gifts" for Santa Claus.

So, we've got an ambitious night ahead of us. Kif was able to encourage a number of DOOP crews to volunteer for the effort. Including the _Leela_, we have fourteen ships to work with. Even now Kif is finalising the battle plan.

I still worry about Fry, though. He's been putting up a brave face, but there can't be any doubt that Leela's death was the toughest thing he's ever had to face, more so than being frozen and thrown into our world.

For some reason, I think that at some key moment, he'll come to a crossroads. I suspect his mind will be filled with memories of her throughout, and when the time comes, he'll either wither under the pressure, or he'll perform some amazingly heroic feat.

I wish I knew which, but some things you just can't see in advance.

If Fry turns out okay, I think Bender will as well. Those guys are really inseparable.

Kif has been looking through the scrapbook these past couple of days. I think he wishes he'd been serving under Leela instead of Brannigan. I for one can't blame him.

As for me?

I don't know what will happen now. I'm taking Fry's advice to heart, though. I'm planning to take up a martial art, hand to hand combat being the biggest area in which I need improvement.

Fry's advice, by the way, made front page news in the _Sewer Observer_. Their article about Leela's funeral ran under this headline:

**'WE OWE YOU OUR BEST'**  
_Friends, coworkers remember Leela in moving ceremony_

I haven't had any of those weird dreams about Leela since I told Fry what really happened.

That's not to say I've been sleeping well, though. These past few nights, I haven't been able to avoid thinking back to Monday evening. Over and over again, I see the beam cut her up. I see her tumble to the ground. I see her last breath. I see the cold, lifeless eye.

And I just curl up in bed next to Kif. What will happen when his leave is up and he has to leave me here alone?

I hope she hasn't been haunting Fry's dreams either. Early this morning I remembered his comment on our way to the funeral, the one about his dream where Leela fought Santa. Is that why he's been so keen on this mission? Has she urged him on in his dreams?

I think maybe Fry has been having dreams about her. Last night, after another planning session, I was talking to him when he suddenly said, "Amy, we have to fulfill this mission. Leela has already died on it."

I said, "What do you mean? She was on a delivery when..."

He shook his head vigorously. "No, look. Once we landed, she had done her part. She was no longer part of the delivery. Her actions from then on were her own business. She went to get those EMP guns, which she was going to use to kill Santa. Therefore, she died in the pursuit of _this_ mission. We've got to make sure that her death isn't in vain."

That didn't sound like the sort of thing Fry would come up with on his own. Not the Fry I'd known, anyway. Maybe this new, more mature Fry would.

On occasion, in the years I've known him, I've thought about what life must have been like in his time. Yesterday, I thought about another aspect of that. Let's suppose, for a moment, that we were all working together a thousand years ago, making deliveries in Old New York. What were the chances of me accidentally killing my best friend and coworker then, compared to now?

Because if that's more likely to happen now, then what the hell good does it do to have all this technology we've come up with? So we can grab a hair from the captain's seat and clone us another Leela. Hoo-fucking-ray. It's not the same.

Another thing I've pondered these last couple of days was this: Leela and Fry were the perfect couple. Everyone, from Bender to the mutant gossip columnists, could see that they were meant to be together.

Yet they could be together only for a week.

So, the question becomes: What does that imply for the rest of us?

Kiffy and I come from such wildly different backgrounds. Our families, our lifestyles, even our body chemistries are so different. How can we make sure that our love lasts?

I talked about this with Kif last night, and he had an interesting reaction. He said, "I've taken comfort from Fry's response to all this. I think that if he can face life without Leela, perhaps I could face life without you, Amy. Stranger things happen, anyway."

I've spent all day today writing this. In about an hour we set off for Neptune to do battle with Santa Claus. The troops are assembling at Planet Express right now. My Kiffy will brief them, but he and Fry thought that I should give an address first. Even now I have no idea what I'm going to say. I only know how I'm going to start.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Amy Wong, captain of the Planet Express Ship _Turanga Leela_."


	2. Sunday 25 December 3003: Recede

_My Ship, second part: Recede_

by Deb H

* * *

**Sunday 25 December 3003**

"Here you are, Amy. I've been looking everywhere for you."

"Mm."

"What are you doing out here?"

"Thinking."

"About what?"

"You."

"Really? Something nice, I hope."

"Shove it, Kif."

"W... what?"

"Kif, what the _hell_ is with you? You treat me like shit the whole week, and then suddenly you get all nice and squishy on me and it's as though nothing ever happened? Not _even_! There's no way I'm letting that go!"

"I don't understand. What is this all about?"

"You don't understand? That's hardly surprising! Did you ever understand me? Were you even _trying_ to understand me? Or is this all just a little game to you? The Manipulate Amy Game? Is that it?"

"Amy..."

"No, it's my own fault. I should have been well aware that you'd become an absolute jerk in stressful situations. I mean, don't we all?"

"But... I was in charge..."

"So? What's that matter? Is it standard operating procedures for commanders to berate their underlings mercilessly and without just cause? Just because you nearly blew the whole thing, don't take it out on me!"

"I... I didn't..."

"No? Fry was held hostage for a whole week! Fry! The best friend I've got left!"

"But Amy, friendship doesn't have anything to do with..."

"Know what? You're right. Friendship doesn't matter. It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. It's just a goddam _distraction_, isn't it?"

"Amy, what are you doing?"

"Oh, you mean this?"

I held up the watch I'd slipped off my arm.

"Kif, I always thought we'd always be friends, even if we didn't work out as a couple. But no, you're right. Friendship doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all."

"Wait, don't do..."

I threw the watch into the frigid, dark sky with all my might. I listened and soon heard the _plunk_ of it entering the East River.

"Kif, we're through."

* * *

And how did we even get to that point?

Well, you spend a week in tense negotiations with a bitterly hostile and superviolent robot, some threads are bound to get frayed.

But still. It doesn't matter how cuddly and creative a man is. If, when you need him the most, he metamorphoses into a pushy and vociferous autocrat, that's a pretty reliable sign of potential trouble in the relationship, isn't it?

Actually, that seems clear now, but I wonder if I wasn't thinking something else at the time. I had an odd thought just as I was coming inside from breaking up with Kif.

Inside our building, we were celebrating our successful mission - using the word _successful_ in a stretch, of course. After all, we'd lost one of our team members, and Santa held Fry captive for a week. And when you add the fact that we were still mourning Leela... let's just say that for a celebration, the mood was hardly celebratory.

As I looked down at everyone standing in their little groups in the hangar, I started to comprehend what I'd done. How long had I been with him? Two years? And I was way happier than I'd ever been in any two year span before that. I was wondering if maybe I'd made a mistake.

I thought to myself, _No, Kif was never going to be the right man for me anyway. Not like Fry._

I turned around and started to walk back toward the kitchen. I felt like I could use a really strong drink about then.

And then I came to a halt.

It sort of felt like the whole Universe came to a halt, really. For about half a second I couldn't feel the floor beneath my feet. I couldn't feel the gravity collapsing my spinal cord. I couldn't smell the scent of open cases of liquor wafting in from the kitchen.

But, as though from some distant galaxy, I did hear myself whispering, "_Fry?!_"

It's been a couple of hours since then, but I still don't know where that thought came from. I mean, I can't be in love with Fry.

Can I?

* * *

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Amy Wong, captain of the Planet Express Ship _Turanga Leela_."

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder toward the _Leela_ as I introduced myself to the various volunteers. Fourteen crews of varying sizes were here: the _Rasheed Wallace_, berthed on the nearby world of Tei 2 and carrying a crew of ten, right down to the _Muggsy Bogues_, a small two person craft that could carry some of the DOOP's experimental weaponry.

They were all parked on the street outside. We were setting things up quickly, but in a lucky twist of fate, our Sunday meeting meant that nobody needed to get Earth change for the meters.

I continued, "I think most of you know Lieutenant Kif Kroker. He'll be leading this mission, and he'll be on board the _Leela_ with myself and my crewmates, Midshipman Fry and Midshipbot Bender.

"On behalf of us all, I want to thank you for volunteering for this mission. I know you've all got loved ones you want to join for Xmas, which is why I'm going to have to make, perhaps, an unusual request. And that is: Don't be a hero.

"Now, nominally, our mission has a single objective. Permanently deactivate the robot Santa Claus.

"But I'll be damned if the only way to accomplish that is by sacrificing ourselves. I want to make sure that on Xmas morning, we're all home safely with our friends or our families. That's the whole point of this mission. I mean, I don't know how many people Santa kills every year -"

A voice from the back of the conference room called out, "Two hundred eighteen last year."

A voice from the side added, "My cousin."

A voice from the back right added, "My neighbour."

A voice from just in front of my feet added, "My cat."

A voice from near the middle of the room added, "My father."

I looked around the room and only then thought about why they'd signed up for this mission - most of them would have some sort of grudge against Santa.

I held up my hand and said to them, "Just don't put yourself or anyone else in harm's way, is all I'm aksing. Not needlessly, I mean. We've tried to put your safety first when we laid out this plan. As long as we all try to think that way, we should have Santa Claus headed for the scrap heap by Wednesday. Now let me hand over to Lieutenant Kroker for your briefing."

He stood before everyone and said, "Thank you, Amy." And I thought, _What, not "Captain Wong"?_

He began to lay out our plan and describe everyone's assignments. Meanwhile, Bender and Fry went down to the ship to make some final adjustments.

Kif was just explaining the role of the _Holly Mackerel_ when, at about 20:14 New New York time on the 18th of December 3003, all hell broke loose.

* * *

I was pouring myself a Pavonis Mons when I heard someone say to me, "There you are, Amy. I thought you'd run off already, but here you are."

"Hey, Zoidberg. Yeah, here I am."

"So, what's with the long face? You were really bringing the mood down earlier."

I looked up at him with a start. "It was just me? I thought everyone was a little sad."

He responded, "Really? I thought they were just getting it from you. You do seem to be issuing more sad pheromones."

I stared into my drink for a while. I think Zoidberg was about to say something when one of the guys on the _Rasheed_ walked in. I think his name was Stein, but everyone seemed to pronounce it more like _Stain_.

Whoever he was, he said, "Hey, Captain Wong. Some party."

"Not really."

"Yeah, I know. I was just being ironic."

"You mean sarcastic?"

He answered, "Great. A melancholy pedant."

I took a sip from my drink and pointed out, "A pedant who's drowning her melancholity in ethanol."

"Well, like they say, melancholity loves company," he said as he poured himself a drink. "One for you as well, Doctor... um..."

"Zoidberg," the doctor said. "No, ethanol does funky things to my species."

Stain said, "So? It has the same effect on our species."

"Not like in Decapodians," Zoidberg told him. "When we consume it, we carry out the worst, most horrifying crimes you can imagine."

"Really?" I said in surprise. "I didn't know that."

He went on, "Once, I knew someone who had so much to drink, he sang Celine Dion at karaoke! Oh, the horror!"

Stain and I stared at one another for a moment before he said, "Anyway, Captain Wong, I was just gonna say, if it's about Captain Arensen, please don't blame yourself. I mean, none of us knew what she was going to do. If we did, we would have stopped her. I mean, we all heard what you said when we started. You know, about not being a hero and all that."

"Yeah, I know. It's not that. It's just... well, I've got a lot on my mind now."

He and Zoidberg looked at me intently. I didn't feel ready to talk about what was really bothering me. Namely, that one weird thought I'd had about Fry. I tried to come up with some idle chatter I could start so I could avoid thinking about him further.

After I'd whiled away a few more minutes staring into my cup, Stain finally spoke up. "So who's Turanga Leela?"

Oh, man. If he thought I was melancholy before, getting me to talk about Leela would kick melancholy in the ass. I went against my better judgment - which said that talking about Leela would put me on the express track to clinical depression - and said, "Our old captain. My best friend. Fry's girlfriend."

"So what happened to her?"

* * *

"Down!" I shouted as the rumbling began.

Just our luck, we'd moved the conference table into the lounge to make more room. Now we were leaving ourselves open to anything falling from the ceiling.

A strong wind blew from the hangar, and then back toward the hangar. My first instinct said we were depressurising, and for a second I actually looked around for handholds before I realised we were on Earth's surface.

Calming down a bit, I looked out toward the hangar, just seeing something smash a hole in the roof as it escaped. Over on the other side, there was another hole. I waited a moment, and nothing further happened.

Kif stood up. "Anyone hurt?" he aksed. There were negative sounds as everyone else stood.

I went over to the steps and called down, "Hey, Bender! Fry! You guys okay?"

"Yeah," Bender responded. "No thanks to that sled though."

"Sled? What?" I aksed in confusion.

"Didn't you see the flying sled go by?"

I shook my head. "What sled?"

"Looked like Santa's."

"Santa's? You think he knows what we're up to?"

"Sure, why not," he said, not exactly comfortingly. He turned away from me and said, "Hey, good thing I landed on top of you, huh Fry?" He walked underneath the _Leela_'s belly before he said, "No, never mind. That was just the bean bag chair."

I looked around and said, "So where is Fry?" Then, thinking better of it, I raced down the steps, saying, "Oh shit! Where's Fry?"

When I got to the hangar floor, I saw two piles of rubble, immediately beneath each of the holes in the roof.

I couldn't lift a single piece off the one I reached first. My body felt numb, and my mind was screaming _Fuck! Not this!_

Bender called from the other pile, "He ain't over here."

"Help me with this one, Bender!"

My wrist started ringing. Bender grabbed everything off the pile until we were satisfied that Fry hadn't been crushed.

I looked around the hangar again. No sign. I said, "So where the hell is he?"

Kif had made his way down to the hangar floor, and he said to me, "Maybe he's trying to call but he can't get through because you _won't answer your goddam wrist!_"

I stared at Kif, shocked. I'd never seen him so angry.

I'd never seen him angry at all. Happy, yes. Disappointed, yes. Humiliated, most definitely.

But angry?

_There's a first time for everything_, I thought, resignedly, as I answered my wrist, "Yeah?"

"Amy, do you think you've been a good little girl this year?" a deep, guttural, humourless voice responded.

"Santa Claus."

"Indeed."

"How'd you reach me, anyway? This is an unlisted wrist."

"I have my ways. Are you going to answer my question?"

"What difference does it make?" No way in hell I was going to let this guy push me around.

"Well, if you must know, I had a very special Xmas present for you. But you won't get it unless you're good."

I looked up and saw Bender milling about, shouting, "Yo Fry! Come out come out wherever you are! Or else I'm gonna have to drink these wonderful, intoxicating beers all by myself! Actually, I'm gonna drink them all by myself anyway, but if you don't come out, you won't get to watch me drink them all by myself! What do you think of that?"

I said to Santa, "The hell are you talking about? Where is all this leading?"

"You don't even want to know what your Xmas gift is?"

"Fine," I sighed. "What is it?"

There was a pause, and then a very familiar voice saying, "What up."

Bender raced over and said into my wrist, "Fry, you're okay! Hang on, man, listen to this!" He downed the bottles of beer he was holding.

I aksed, "Fry, are you all right?"

"Sure. I think Santa's trying to torture me, but he's really bad at it. _Oof!_ What was that? You call that punishment? You got nothing, Kringle! _Oof!_"

Santa rejoined the discussion, saying, "As you can tell, your friend Fry is alive. And if you're good, you get him back."

"Specify what you mean by _good_."

"You have something I want. Four somethings, actually."

The EMP guns. This was laughable. Did he think he would actually get us to hand them over voluntarily?

Then again, the last frantic couple of minutes had shown me that I couldn't lose Fry. Not so soon after losing Leela.

I didn't know what to do next, so I stalled. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm sure you don't. If you did, you would be admitting to a felony, which would be very naughty indeed."

He was definitely talking about the EMP rifles. Possessing them was a felony under planetary law. "What do you suggest?"

"Bring your four somethings to my base. I trust you know where it is?"

"Yes. At what time?"

"As soon as you can arrive here."

Then I heard Fry calling, "Don't give in, Amy! I mean, what's this guy gonna do? He'll just keep on with his reign of _error_, that's all! Ha ha ha - _oof!_"

Santa said, "Shut up, you! Anyway, are we agreed?"

I looked up at Kif. He was shaking his head and moving a hand back and forth across his neck.

I looked over at all the volunteers. They were looking back at me expectantly.

I looked over at Bender. He said, "The hell are you looking at, chumpette?"

I looked down at my wrist and said, icily, "Very well."

"Good. I look forward to our meeting," Santa hissed, and abruptly hung up.

When I looked up again, Kif had a hand to his forehead, shaking his head. Bender was tossing beer bottles and catching them in his mouth. And the volunteers were whispering to one another nervously.

"Ah, crap," I said to nobody in particular.

* * *

"And so I'm looking down at her, right? Holding her head in my hands. And she says... she says, 'Tell him I love him'. And just like that, she's gone."

A pair of hands gripped my shoulders. I turned and looked up into LaBarbara's face. She had tears in her eyes.

Then, I finally took notice of the rest of the room. About twenty of the people who'd flown our mission were crowded into the kitchen. Stain and Zoidberg were still sitting at the table opposite me, and the captain of the _Chewy Nougat_, a Trapezian who lived in Chicago, had taken the remaining chair. Everyone else stood against the counters or the refrigerator.

There didn't seem to be a dry eye anywhere. Zoidberg's face was buried in his claws. Stain was staring down at his hands, a tear rolling down his cheek. A couple serving together on the _Rasheed_ held one another firmly.

There were three empty cups sitting in front of me on the table. Two more were in front of Stain, and Algra, the _Nougat_ captain, was just finishing up his second drink.

I started talking again. "And so we named our ship after her. And it's because of her that we went on this mission in the first place."

"How's that?" somebody aksed.

"That's what she was doing. She went off to get the EMP rifles, and when she came back..." I choked up again, and LaBarbara bent down to hug me from behind. I continued, "Anyway, she'd been talking to Fry earlier about going after Santa."

"Know what I just realised?" someone from the _Mackerel_ said. "_Santa_'s an anagram for _Satan_."

Stain replied, "You didn't know that?"

People murmured, "I didn't notice," or "Well, _duh_," or something.

I said, "So anyway, if you guys were wondering why Fry and I have been all moody, it's not only because of Captain Arensen."

LaBarbara aksed, "So what do you think of Fry, girl?"

I hurriedly looked around, not seeing Fry. Then I looked up at her, trying to elicit further explanation of her question.

She said, "I meant, do you think he'll get over her?"

"I don't know if he ever will. I mean, he met her as soon as he got here, right?"

I heard someone behind me aks, "Why, where's he from?"

LaBarbara told him, "He from de twentieth century, mon."

"Yeah, she was supposed to give him his career chip when he came out of the freezer," I explained. "But he ran off and she chased after him, but then she was all like, _Dammit, I hate my job too_, and she took out her own chip."

"You really think they were meant for one another?" Stain said.

LaBarbara shook her head and said, "Oh, it was so obvious! Dem two woulda done anything for one another. Shit, dey did. Didn't you people ever hear of dat holophonor opera he wrote about her?"

Nobody had.

A girl from the _Clive Anderson_ said, half to herself, "I went to an opera once about some one eyed chick. Then some robot came and took his hands back. The guy who was playing just sucked with his own hands."

"Dat's de one," LaBarbara said.

The girl giggled but spluttered to a halt when she looked up at LaBarbara. She said, "Seriously?"

LaBarbara nodded, and I added, "Yeah, but even then, Fry hadn't won her over. That took _another_ few months."

"Damn," Algra muttered. "If some girl did that for me, I'd be all over her right then."

"Hang on," someone in the corner interjected. "Did you say 'one eyed'?"

"Yeah," the girl said.

"What happened to her other eye?"

Zoidberg looked up and said, "She only ever had the one. She always did have trouble with that, what with the missing when we played ultimate."

"Yeah, she was a mutant," I continued. "She grew up in an orphanarium. I didn't mention that?"

A slow, wide eyed shake of the head from Stain indicated that I hadn't. Others were also shaking their heads.

I resumed the storytelling. "Yeah, she was found on the steps of an orphanarium. Her parents left her there with an alien note, so nobody would guess she was a mutant. Worked, too, for twenty seven years."

"She didn't tell anyone until she was 27?"

"No, she didn't _know_ until she was 27. How would she know? Spent her whole childhood in an orphanarium, spent her whole life wondering which of the hundreds of billions of galaxies she came from, spent every day letting more and more anger at her unknown species build up..."

I fell silent, and the girl from the _Clive_ said, "So, wait. How did you guys find out?"

"Fry," I told her. "He had the note analysed and found out it was printed on sewer paper. I mean, without him... she would have..."

I found I couldn't continue the story. I bent forward and hid my face in my elbow, trying to absorb some of the tears into my sleeve. I could feel LaBarbara rubbing my shoulders, and then I heard her saying, "All right, ya drifters. Story time's over. Go and enjoy de party."

Then, I heard people milling about and walking past. A few put their hands on my head or my back as they left.

LaBarbara lifted my chin up, and when I looked up, I found her sitting on the table next to me. She said, "Come on, let's get ya some alone time."

She pulled me to my feet and led me into Hermes's office.

* * *

By Wednesday, we were no closer to freeing Fry.

Kif and I had argued the whole flight to Neptune. We ended up sending Bender in to negotiate a settlement, preferably one that didn't involve giving up our only weapons.

The EMP guns themselves were kept in plain view throughout the proceedings, just as Fry was bound on the other side of the table. Every eight hours, we would rotate shifts guarding the guns, and Fry would pee, crap, and eat.

Not simultaneously. One at a time.

Anyway, when I got out of the shower on Wednesday morning, I stood in front of the mirror, examining my nude body. My tan was fading, and under normal circumstances, I would have taken a tanning pill and watched my complexion return to the way I liked it.

But these circumstances were abnormal. I wasn't eating very much. I wasn't getting a lot of sleep, either.

I spent so much time in meetings with the other captains and with Kif. Kif kept wanting to take action. He'd talk about "forcing Santa's hand", claiming that Santa was waiting for something. I would always be like, "Well, bl'uh! He's waiting for Xmas Eve!"

Then he'd call me a pacifist and I'd call him an insensitive bastard. And the other captains would continue on talking amongst themselves.

When I looked down at my body that morning, I started thinking about the differences between myself and Leela.

And there were so many. The number of eyes, obviously. She went for conservative colours - except she had a thing for bright green, for some odd reason. I had my pink sweat suit, the sort of thing you'd never see her in. And I stood some twenty centimetres shorter than she did, with narrower hips and smaller breasts as well. I exercised for appearance; she did so for... what? Had she been responding to people who didn't take her seriously? Did she bulk up to prove something? Or did she just have plenty of frustrations to work off?

Probably some combination thereof.

I hated my parents for their presence; she hated hers for their absence, at least until she met them. I couldn't take anything seriously; she couldn't avoid taking everything seriously. I was concerned with appearance, whereas she didn't give a shit.

I had a guess as to why that last part was so. She knew that nothing she could do would make people see her as anything other than a monocular freak. Hence her self reliance: if she wasn't going to get any sympathy from anyone else, she was damn well going to make sure she didn't need any.

As a consequence, she simply could not relate to others.

Maybe I had a similar problem. I always tried to take her out whenever she was feeling down. The trouble was, I kept taking her to clubs and bars, places I liked to go. I never found out where she liked to go or what she liked to do.

I'd always look over at her, slumped at the bar, her face issuing the message _I don't want to be here_. I felt bad for her, but I thought that if we kept visiting different places, she'd find the one that suited her.

I even got her in bed with me a couple of times. She seemed to approach bisexuality the way she did everything else. Willing to experiment, but in the end finding that it wasn't right for her.

My idle thoughts were interrupted when I heard Kif from down the hallway. "Amy, where are you? It's time for our shift. Everyone's - oh."

I looked up to see his mirror image averting his eyes. I sighed. "Kif, you've seen me naked before. About everyone has, thanks to Bender."

"Regardless, we're up for our shift. If you think you can keep your clothes on for a few hours, perhaps you'd care to join us."

He walked away, and when he was off the ship, I said to myself, "Yeah, and if you can control your urge to try and chop off Santa's head, maybe I won't have to mourn _both_ of my best friends."

* * *

LaBarbara sat me down on the couch in her husband's office. As she sat next to me, she kind of turned onto her side and rested her head against the wall. She spread a long arm across the back of the couch toward me and began to look at me.

I looked back at her.

Finally I started to say, "Did you -"

"Shh."

I continued to look at her, trying to ascertain just what the hell was going on here. Her face gave away nothing, and I made a mental note to give her a call if I ever took up tag team poker.

Presently my mind began to wander.

"Twenty bucks says you're thinking about Fry right now."

"How did you know?" I hadn't formed a cogent thought, but my mind had been wandering in the direction of what had been going on the week before.

LaBarbara said to me, "Let me aks you a question first. Do you still have a thing for him?"

"No, I'm just..." I lifted my feet off the floor and folded my legs underneath my ass. "You know, I just like him. I... he's a good friend to have."

"No one's arguing dat," she responded. "But he's more dan dat to you. Why?"

"Well, I mean, he's fun to be around. He makes me see things differently."

For a brief moment I thought back to that conversation I'd had with Leela in the bar the night before her last mission. Now LaBarbara was playing my role, and I had taken the position of Leela. By symmetry, that would mean that I'd be dead within a day.

I thought, _Maybe that would be for the best_.

Then I realised LaBarbara was talking. "Damn, girl. I know ya got a lot on your mind now, but try to stay here in de present, okay?"

"Sorry."

"Anyway, I was saying, how does Fry make you see things differently?"

"Um, because he's not from our time, I guess. He'll just say something completely random, and I'll just crack up. Or all his twentieth century stories about, like, how they couldn't show nudity on TV, except for this middle aged cop's ass."

She gave a perplexed look, but in short order she continued. "So what about Kif?"

"I broke it off."

She lifted her head up and eyed me strangely. I felt like she was analysing my mental stability, and I wasn't passing the test.

"Ya broke up with Kif."

"Yeah."

"After two years."

"Yeah."

"Just like dat."

I slipped my left foot out of my boot and squeezed at my ankle with both hands. I had tight muscles all over my body - I just wanted to go home, spread out on my bed, and not have to do anything for a few days.

In response to her, I said, "Yeah, just like that."

She stood up and shook her head. As she walked around Hermes's desk, she suddenly turned to me and said, "He wasn't cheating on you, was he?"

"No. But this past week..."

"Yeah. What happened dis week?"

"You weren't here when we told the story?"

"I missed dat part," she said. "Hermes came home Monday ranting about how ya'd stolen de ship and bashed a hole in de roof dat he had to patch up. By dis morning he was madder dan Karl Marx's ghost on May Day. Den ya called saying ya'd killed Santa."

"Yeah, that's about it. We were going to attack on Sunday night, but then Santa came and took Fry. We sent Bender in to negotiate with Santa, but that wasn't going anywhere, and then... well, you heard about Captain Arensen, didn't you?"

She nodded. She sat on the edge of Hermes's desk and repeated, "So what about Kif?"

I reclined across the couch, resting my head on an armrest and my feet on the other, and I clasped my hands across my stomach. "The entire week, Kif was... he was fucking awful."

"What do ya mean?"

"Well, he'd just be all 'Amy, how could you let them go into harm's way like that?' He'd yell at me for how I thought we should play it safe. He kept telling me I was the weak link in our group, and he even thought I was spying for Santa. He thought I was wearing a wire, and so he actually started to rip off my clothes. In front of everyone. God, it was fucking humiliating."

"And Fry was being held hostage de whole time?"

"Yeah. And I just felt so damn _guilty_ the whole time. Guilty and helpless. Oh, and scared. So scared that I was going to lose Fry at any minute."

After I stopped talking, I didn't get an immediate response. As I was waiting, I stared up at the ceiling. Hermes had replaced some of the light fixtures in here, and the new lights gave the office a more open feeling, as though we were sitting on top of a spacecraft.

"When'd ya cut Kif loose?"

"Tonight, during the party."

"So ya dumped Kif hoping ya could get with Fry instead."

I turned to her in surprise. She'd been speaking bluntly with me the whole time, of course, but was that how she saw it? At the time I couldn't see how she could draw that conclusion from what I'd said.

She went on, "Dat's like trying to sell an owl to a bum. He's in mourning, girl. Ya don't know what dat's like."

"I'm in mourning, too. Leela was my best friend."

"It ain't even close. Did I ever tell ya about Dawn?"

I said, "No. Who's that?"

* * *

_Bloolooloolooloolooloop_.

_Bloolooloolooloolooloop_.

_Bloolooloolooloolooloop_.

_Bloolooloolooloolooloop_.

_Bloolooloolooloolooloop_.

_Bloolooloolooloolooloop_.

_Bloolooloolooloolooloop_.

"Yeah?"

"Amy, we need you out here."

"_Ai ya_. What the hell time is it?"

"It doesn't matter. Santa's leaving."

"Leaving? Where's he going?"

"Earth."

"What for?"

"As you might say, _g'uh_. It's Xmas Eve."

"Okay, okay, Kif. I'll be out in a minute."

* * *

"And so Hermes rushed over. He pushed a couple of guides out of de way, and he was all shouting, 'Ya can't be in labour, wife! De baby's not due for another two months!'"

I was still lying on the couch. I'd turned over on my stomach, and I had my arms folded on the armrest. With my chin resting on my arms, I was looking down at LaBarbara, who was sitting on the floor with her back against the couch.

She continued, "So I said, 'Well, did ya CC Dawn on dat memo? She got her own agenda, husband!'"

I gave a weak little laugh. "Explaining it in terms he could understand?"

"Yeah, something like dat. Dey got me to de hospital quick enough, and when dey got me to the obstetrics ward, dey brought out de forms, and I figured I was on me own. I swear, ya get a form in Hermes's hand, he's in his own little world. But he was right dere by me side de whole time. I couldn't believe how small she was when I first saw her."

"How small?" I aksed.

"She was three thousand two hundred grams. Dey said dat was still big for a thirty one week gestation. And so they put her in NICU, and -"

"In what?"

"NICU. De neonatal intensive care unit. Ya know, for de premature births. We went in to see her every day. Dere was something else wrong every day, but de doctors said she was doing well mostly. Den when Hermes and I went in one day, dey said she was in real trouble. She'd already been battling with pneumonia, and den she came down with bacterial meningitis."

"So... did she..."

LaBarbara shook her head. "She died at 43 days."

"Shit."

"Ya want to know what de hardest part was?"

"What?"

She turned and looked at me over her shoulder. "Explaining to little four year old Dwight dat he wasn't going to have a little sister after all."

We sat in silence for a while.

Then she stood up and said, "Anyway, my point was, at least ya got to spend a few years with Leela."

I sat up and stretched. LaBarbara walked behind Hermes's desk and pulled a bottle of rum from a drawer. She drank a bit and offered the bottle to me.

I was just about to say no when my wrist rang. I poked the button and said, "Yeah?"

"Hey! Spaz girl! How's your Xmas so far?"

I sat there stunned, just staring at my wrist. When I looked up at LaBarbara, she was aksing an unspoken question.

I stammered, "B... Be... Bethany?"

* * *

"Fry! You're okay!"

I ran up to him and jumped into his arms. He said, "Ooh... ah... careful with the hands."

When I took his arms and looked at his fingers, they were all red. They felt rough and hard.

"Damn," I said. "It's not frostbite, is it?"

"I don't think so. I can still feel them."

"Well, we'd better get you to the medbay just in case." I gave him another hug. "God, what a relief. I thought he might -"

And then there was an explosion.

Of course, neither of us could figure out what the hell was going on for a few seconds. At first, it was just a low rumbling from the ice beneath our feet. Then I saw Fry look over my shoulder.

He shoved me to the ground, cradling my head in his hands.

As I struck the ground, I got a quick look at a flaming plume some distance behind us. The wind began to blow in our faces, but soon afterward a strong, hot wind rushed at us from the opposite direction. We were quickly shrouded in darkness as the vibrations became dramatic, and then violent. The shaking became so intense that it seemed to overload my brain. I couldn't hear, feel, or even see anything else.

Then, as the rumbles died away, I could hear what seemed to be little splats on the ground around us.

"You all right, Amy?"

As my disorientation evaporated, I found Fry's hands under my head, and his body above mine.

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah. I think so."

"What the hell was that?"

"I hope it wasn't the ship."

"The _Leela_? No, it's over the other way."

As he got up and pulled me to my feet, I could feel hot droplets on my face and hands. Confused, I aksed, "Is it raining?"

"The blast must have vapourised the ice," Fry told me.

"Come on, we'd better look for the others."

The air had cleared a bit, so that we could now see a smoky plume in one direction. We started walking.

As we got close, Fry suddenly grabbed my shoulder. I looked back at him, and he pointed down.

I had nearly stepped off the edge of the ice, which fell away into what appeared to be some sort of crater. I could barely see it in the darkness, but there were pieces of wrecked metal down at the centre. The whole thing looked to be at least a hundred metres across.

To our left, I saw the _Chewy Nougat_. Fry and I made our way over to it, where we found Algra and his five crewmates.

He said, "Captain Wong! Mr Fry! Good!" To his wrist, he said, "I've got Captain Wong and Mr Fry here. They look like they're okay." Then to us, "Now everyone's accounted for except Captain Arensen."

I said, "Wasn't the _Muggsy_ parked in orbit?"

"Yeah. It was supposed to have passed over just a few minutes ago, but I don't think anyone's heard from her."

Then my wrist rang again. "Yeah?"

Kif said, "I was just talking to Mr Zarakha."

"Who's he again?"

"From the _Muggsy Bogues_?"

"Oh, yeah. Where is the _Muggsy_?"

"At the centre of the crater, it would seem."

Algra and Fry looked up at me.

I said, haltingly, "Seriously?"

"No, imaginarily," Kif responded gruffly. "Yes, seriously! Mr Zarakha received some telemetry from the _Muggsy_ when it approached."

"It crashed?"

"Not quite."

"What do you mean?"

"Unless you think it was coincidence that the ship happened to strike Santa's sled."

* * *

"Actually, they call me BW now."

BW. Bethany Weir.

In four years of college, I made two really good friends. But neither of them were my classmates - they were my coworkers. Fry and Leela.

Bethany was the next name on my list, though.

She said to me, "I saw the news. You guys really blew up Santa Claus?"

"Yep."

"Well, doesn't that just burn the lettuce," she said. She claimed that was a common expression where she came from, but I still think she made it up.

"It was on the news?"

"Yeah. It was the lead story. Y'all are heroes. Anyway, reason I called, I was just wondering if you were doing anything today, because I've got a room at that resort your parents own."

"Really?"

"Yeah. My friend from work was going to join me, but now his girlfriend's got plans for him. You in?"

I lifted my head up and looked at LaBarbara. She held a hand out, as if to say _Go ahead_.

"Sure," I said to Bethany. "I think I need to get away for a while."

"Great! You still working in New New York?"

"Yeah, same place. You've been here, haven't you?"

"Yeah, I know where it is. I'll be there in twenty minutes or so."

"Okay."

"See you in a bit."

She clicked off.

* * *

The cleanup took most of the day Saturday, and it was rough, not least because we had to locate the remains of Wanda Arensen, the captain of the _Muggsy Bogues_.

Kif assigned us all to the collection of the wreckage. We had to photograph the pieces before we ever touched them, and we had to log them and mark down where they were located.

He was following DOOP procedure strictly, which meant that I was basically out of the loop. The other crews might not have known the procedures, but as active servicemen, they were expected to. Even Fry and Bender, who'd served in the military once before, were expected to pitch in.

And yes, Kif kept right on being an arrogant fuckhead. He seemed to be getting in everyone's faces. It seemed like nobody could do anything without infuriating him. He spent a couple of minutes rounding on Stain, the guy from the _Rasheed Wallace_.

I mean, Leela could be a hardass, but she just wanted everything to go smoothly. As for Kif, he seemed to be lost in the arcane minutiae of the regulations and couldn't see the bigger picture.

As I sat with Zarakha, the robot who had served alongside Captain Arensen on the _Muggsy_, I came to decide that I would break up with Kif when we returned home.

Of course, I didn't know that Hermes, Zoidberg, and the Professor had a party waiting for us when we landed.

On the way back to Earth, I found I was aksing myself what I'd ever seen in Kif in the first place. I mean, when he got here for Leela's funeral, he just wasn't much comfort at all. Now that I think about it, the way I felt so much calmer with Fry around - and the withdrawal symptoms when he wasn't around - would explain the way I suddenly felt about him.

But maybe I'd always felt that way about Fry. Certainly I did back when we were dating, but since then he was merely a friend. I have to think, though, that even during that time, my subconscious still had a crush on him.

I don't know. If it wasn't a long distance relationship, I probably would have run into Kif's unpleasant side sooner. But as things were, I'd been infatuated with Kif for two years before I saw the whole story.

In any case, when we landed in the hangar, I grabbed Kif's hand and led him off the ship, snarling, "I want to talk to -"

"Welcome back, my heroic underlings!"

Professor Farnsworth was standing at the foot of the stairs, with everyone else - Cubert, LaBarbara, Dwight, Nibbler, Hermes, Zoidberg, Scruffy - clustered around him. The other ships' crews were starting to trickle into the hangar as well, and presumably the rest would be joining us once they found parking spaces.

Hermes shouted, "Thanks to you deserters, dis is de first Xmas Eve in two hundred years where it's safe to go out after dark!"

"Great," I muttered.

The others were arriving, and Fry, Bender, and Zarakha were now making their way down the steps. The mood was dampening rapidly.

During the day, Zarakha had analysed the trajectory data he'd received from the last moments of the _Muggsy_. There could now be no doubt that Captain Arensen had flown a suicide mission.

Her ship impacted the sled that Santa Claus had just begun to warm up. He'd been just a couple of minutes away from taking off and storming Earth again.

Zarakha came up behind us and whispered to Kif, "Lieutenant Kroker, I must now leave to inform Captain Arensen's mother."

I whispered, "Her mother?"

"Yes," Zarakha answered. "Her father gave his life defending their home from Santa Claus twelve years ago this night." He saluted to Kif and left.

A week previously, Fry, who'd served alongside Leela, had to bring bad news to her parents. Now Zarakha had to bring bad news to Captain Arensen's mother. I began to wonder who else would die because of me.

"Hey, who wants to know how lovable and handsome Bender saved the day?"

Bender was standing on a work bench on the hangar floor. We all gathered around him to hear his account. For a while I thought he was playing up his own role. He is Bender, after all. But I considered that he had spent an entire week at the table with Santa, in tense and often contentious negotiations. One wrong move, and Fry would have been dead.

And perhaps I would have been dead on the inside.

As the evening went on, I got a chance to speak with some of the other volunteers who'd joined us. I found out that the DOOP was actually supporting the mission, at least by allowing the volunteers to borrow their own ships during winter leave. Someone said that it was sort of a final exam for Kif; if he succeeded, he'd get his own command.

A short while after that, I stepped outside and stood at the seawall, trying to sort my thoughts. Kif showed up, and I took the opportunity to ditch him.

Then, I told everyone about Leela. I had that chat with LaBarbara, and then Bethany called.

I made my way out the front door and listened to the crunching sounds my boots made in the snow. It looked like it had come today, but the skies were clear at the moment.

My wrist reported the time as 02:14 New New York time on Sunday, 25 December 3003.

"Hey, Amy," I heard from above my head.

"Hey, Fry," I called.

Dimly, I could see him on the balcony above me. He was leaning on the railing between the _N_ and the _E_.

He looked to the north, and I saw a car descending to the street in front of me.

Bethany rolled down a window. "Hey Amy. You ready?"

"Yeah." I walked round to the passenger door.

Fry called down, "Where are you going, Amy?"

I stopped and cast my gaze up to him.

I'm not sure if it was right to leave him like that. We both need one another's help right now, I know that. But at the same time, I was deeply confused.

So I'm taking some time to figure out just what I'm feeling.

I said, "Bye Fry. I'll be back in a couple of days."

I climbed in and shut the door.

"Want to pick up some clothes or something?" she aksed as we ascended.

I saw Fry hold up his hand in a little wave, which I returned. Not like he would have seen me.

I turned back to Bethany and said, "Yeah. How long do you have the room?"

"The whole week, but, you know, you can leave whenever you want."

When I flicked on the light in my apartment, I finally got a good look at Bethany.

I said, "What, did you get neutered or something?"

She giggled and said, "Yeah, I did, actually. Like it?"

Her black hair, which she used to wear in a braid, was now short and dropped down in something of a bob. Her face had already looked a bit boyish, and combined with the new hairstyle, she seemed somewhere in between the genders.

"I had my reproductive organs taken out. I've only got the urethra and the anus between my legs now."

"Did you have your breasts removed, too?" I said.

She told me, "Yeah. I've decided I want to be androgynous. So I call myself BW, and I consider myself an 'it'." She hesitated, then went on, "Would you mind that? Saying 'it' instead of 'she' or 'her', I mean?"

I just stood in stunned silence. I think I blinked, too.

She - um, it - put its hands on its hips and sighed. "Look, it's still me, Amy. Only my body is different. Can you at least accept that?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course I can. I'm sorry, I just... it's a little bit unusual."

"Well, it isn't really," it replied. It sounded as though it had been through this before. "I mean, there's several thousand of us on Mars alone."

"Out of what, a couple hundred million?"

It smiled at me. "You always could put things into perspective."

I said, "Bet your parents are pleased."

She - _it_, dammit, _it_ - gave a humourless laugh. "My mother was all like, 'I have no daughter!' Well, okay, that's technically true now, but still, it wasn't the sort of thing I was hoping to hear."

"Well, it does take a little adjusting, but still, she's totally out of line. People have sex changes all the time these days."

"Yes, but not sex _removals_."

"Well, same thing. The only thing is, you can't have sex now. What difference does that make?"

"I can still have oral sex." It said that as it lowered its chin and tried to give me a seductive look.

I say _tried_ because it wasn't hitting any of my buttons. I simply wasn't in that sort of mood, so I just said, "Thanks BW, but not now."

"Okay. Let's just get you packed then."

I took along one of my other sweat suits and a swimsuit. Then I threw in my VR helmet, gloves, and shoes. Not sure why.

Finally, I grabbed this book. And now, here I am, sitting in the back seat of BW's car, and we're almost at the California Nebula Spa and Lagoon. I was hoping writing all this down would help me sort my feelings out. But no, I'm more helpless than ever.

In the past two weeks, I've lost my two best female friends. I killed Leela, of course, and now Bethany's no longer female. So now where do I go when I need a sympathetic ear?

I think I still have two choices. Today was the first time I really got a chance to have a long talk with LaBarbara, which also made me realise how little I'd known about my friends and coworkers. More than four years working together, and Hermes had never mentioned anything about Dawn.

And then there's Fry.

Even though he's male, he puts me at ease in a way I haven't felt with other men - not even Kif. Except, obviously, that there's one subject I can't talk about with him. And it's precisely the subject that I ought to be talking about with someone.

No, talking isn't quite what I need. What I'm looking for is an answer, since there's one question above all else that's bothering me.

Where am I to go from here?


	3. Thursday 29 December 3003: Asphyxiate

_My Ship, third part: Asphyxiate_

by Deb H

* * *

**Thursday 29 December 3003**

My parents own the California Nebula Spa and Lagoon. Anybody who knows them would be able to tell instantly. The architecture is nice, but not wretchedly excessive. Move in closer, though, and that's when you see where the money really went.

Banisters of the most delicate design, one is afraid to rest a hand upon them. Mirrors framed in bronze that, upon inspection, turn out to be smart mirrors that hide the viewer's blemishes whilst highlighting the attractive features.

And the doorknobs.

No two alike, their ornate design seems to blend in so well with their surroundings that it can be some time before the mind says to itself, "Hey, wait a minute. Nobody uses doorknobs any more." Some seem to be constructed of little metallic flowers, others of spare robot parts, others still of hematite rocks plucked from the basins of Mars.

BW touched its hand to a spherical doorknob with swirling greenish-blue clouds reminiscent of a gas giant, and the door to room 1119 slid open. BW's luggage was already scattered around the room, so I dropped my bag in one corner.

BW aksed me, "What do you think?"

Whenever BW talked, I couldn't avoid thinking of its original identity, Bethany. When she had surgery to become genderless, there was one thing she didn't have changed.

I replied, "You kept your voice the same. That's convenient."

It gave a pleased smile and said, "I was talking about the room, but yeah, I like my voice as it is."

"You don't think it's too girly?"

"Being a little girly's unavoidable. I mean, I started out as a girl. Why? Do _you_ think it's too girly?" It picked up a pillow from the couch and began to jab me with it. "Is that what you think, Miss Pretty in Pink? Is it?" it teased.

After a few more pokes, it sat down on the couch and aksed, "So are you tired? You want to go to bed?"

I should have been tired. I'd been up the whole day. At that time it would have been about 06:00 New New York time on Xmas morning. But I didn't want to go to bed. Instead...

"You want to play Sheravone?" I aksed.

BW said, "Yeah, but I'm too tired now. Are you going to play now?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I'll take a nap now. Go and do whatever, and then we'll play when I get up."

"Okay."

I took my baggage into the bedroom as BW settled on the couch. Even when she was female, she preferred to sleep on couches over beds.

* * *

I connected up my VR suit, the one the Professor had designed. It was so much more comfortable than anything else I'd tried, and it was free.

Sheravone was gradually growing in popularity. It was one of the many one on one combat games, with some new weapon types that took a long time to master. Hence, matches between experts could be quite thrilling to watch, as they attempted to curl their bullets or flying discs around obstacles.

I fought battle after battle, routinely getting my ass kicked. I'd set my skill level a couple of notches higher than I actually was. I wonder if subconsciously I wanted to give myself a savage virtual beating, as penance for my horrible mistakes over the past couple of weeks.

Bethany entered from time to time, and she kicked my ass with equal adroitness as my anonymous opponents.

I continued to fight on, my severed body parts reassembling after each humiliation. I'm pretty sure I won at least a couple in there. I must have. In the state I was in, though, how much was I really going to remember?

* * *

I opened my eyes. The bright, sterile lights stabbed at my brain.

A figure moved into view and began talking. "Amy! Hey! How you feeling?"

I answered him, "Fry? Is that you?" My throat didn't produce the kind of volume I'd hoped for.

He said, "Yeah, it's me. You got whanged on the head pretty bad. You might have had some hallucinations."

"What do you mean?"

"I gave you some saltarisone. It's used to treat concussions. It usually gets people out of a comatose state, but it can create some pretty vivid hallucinations in the process."

My eyes had just finished their calibration process and were now focussing on the far wall. I sat up sharply.

I was in the medbay on the Planet Express ship.

The _Turanga Leela_.

Fry put a hand on my shoulder and gently pushed me back down onto the table.

I said, "How did we get here?"

"Don't move," he said. "Just lie there for a while. You might still be a little disoriented."

"Where are we?"

He told me, "We're coming back from Canopus 5. You've been out for, I don't know, an hour."

Gradually my mind was clearing, and I couldn't fit any of this together. Nervously, I aksed him another question. "What... what's today?"

"Monday."

"Monday? You said I was out an hour!"

"You were. It's about 20:30 now."

"No, no, hold it." I shook my head and held up a finger. "Monday the what?"

"The twelfth," he responded.

"The _twelfth_? Of _January_?"

"Nooo, December," he said, perplexed. Then his face suddenly cleared. He murmured, "Your hallucination," and then he looked down at me. "Man, Amy, you must have had a hell of a hallucination. It's the twelfth of December, 3003. We just made that delivery to Canopus 5. You fell down the stairs and hit your head."

A voice behind my head said, "Hey, Amy. How are you feeling?"

I turned around.

And went slack jawed.

Leela placed her hand on my forehead. I reached up and touched her hand. Then I grabbed it in both of mine and stared up at her.

I said, "L... Le... y... you... I th... oh my god... you... you're alive."

She looked uncertainly at Fry. He got up and came over next to me, lightly pushing Leela aside.

He held my hand firmly and looked down at me. "Amy, did you... did you think Leela was dead?"

I nodded.

He gripped my hand a little tighter. "It was a hallucination, Amy. Nothing more. Leela's right here. She's fine, see?"

I turned to her and aksed, "But... what about that guy?"

She told me, "I got away from him. He wasn't going to kill me anyway. But when I came over to the stairs, I saw you unconscious. I figured you'd tripped and fallen down after I called for your help."

Fry added, "Yeah, and then when I got back, I carried you in here and treated you while Leela took off. Actually," he continued with a little amused smile, "we almost took off without Bender. I was here with you, so I didn't realise he was gone."

I looked back at him. "Wait, you've been treating me?"

"Yeah. I've got a little bit of experience dealing with coma victims," he said as he turned toward Leela. She ran her hand through his hair and kissed his cheek.

He resumed, "Anyway, just stay there for a while, Amy. It'll be a little while before the chemistry in your brain equili... evens out again."

The two of them sat on the table opposite me, and Leela, with an arm around Fry, said to him, "Fry, now that Amy seems to be okay, there was something I wanted to talk to you about."

He said, "What's that?"

She looked away at the wall behind me and nervously answered, "That thing I said on the way out. You know."

He nodded glumly.

I thought back to my argument with Leela on our way to Canopus 5. Fry had walked in just as Leela said "I am so sick of this fucking relationship!"

He hadn't responded too well.

Leela sighed and continued, "What I _meant_ was that part of me was denying the obvious and refusing to accept you. I mean, there were some things that I expected my ideal man to be."

"And I'm none of them," Fry said, his gaze directed at the floor.

"Not at first. But you've been so responsible lately. You know, walking Nibbler these past few days, decorating my apartment, taking care of Amy now..."

He shrugged. "Any decent person would do that."

"No, Fry, any decent person wouldn't do that. Only you would. It's... well... I've been thinking a lot lately. About that argument you and I always have."

"What argument?"

"You know, about whether our lives are defined by what we do or by what happens to us."

I blinked. I tried to imagine a philosophical debate with Fry. All I could think of was pounding my fist against the wall in frustration.

She said, "Well, I still think that if you'd fallen _next_ to the freezer, or if your boss had seen through that crank call, or if I'd taken New Year's Eve off like I wanted, I'd still be at that shitblow job, never visiting any other planets... never finding my parents... never... never falling in love."

She was looking right into Fry's eyes as she said that last part.

She went on, "So that's why I... well... ah whatever, I'll just say it. Fry, I love the shit out of you. I've seen what it would be like to have you taken away, and I don't want that. I want you with me everywhere. I want... well..." She looked down at her hands. "I don't have it with me, and, you know, this isn't the way people usually do it, but I don't care. You and I, we always seem to do everything backward anyway."

Fry shook his head slowly. "I don't know what you're saying, Leela. Do you want to move in together, or what?"

She smiled as she grasped his hand. She held the palm of his left hand in the palm of hers. Her right hand reached around the fingers of his left hand. She continued to hold his hand that way and finally looked up at him.

"Fry. Will you marry me?"

He seemed stunned.

I couldn't blame him.

Finally he said, "You really mean it?"

She nodded.

He breathed deeply. "Big step."

Her gaze fell – undoubtedly she was bracing herself for rejection. But knowing Fry as I did, I was sure of what would happen next.

I wasn't _quite_ right, it turned out.

Their hands still wrapped together, Fry guided Leela's left hand into the pocket on the right side of his jacket. Her hand emerged with a tiny little black box in it.

_Nuh-uh_, I thought to myself in amazement.

He said, ever so softly, "I wanted to surprise you. You beat me to it."

His fingers fumbled with the box as he hinged it open. When it was open wide, so was Leela's eye.

She started to speak, then stopped. This repeated a couple more times.

Fry said to her, "I know what you're thinking. And you're right. It's not a millionth as beautiful as you are."

She answered, "Actually, what I was thinking was, Bender must have stolen it for you. There's no way you can afford this."

"Shhh," he whispered. He pulled the ring out and slid it onto her finger, and I finally got a look at it.

It was a narrow silver band around her finger, with circular purple gemstones spaced equally around the circumference. A big spherical diamond sat atop the ring. From my vantage point I couldn't tell just how big the diamond was, but a good estimate would be Madison Cube Garden.

Leela looked like she could have stared at the ring all day, but when Fry pulled her close, she grabbed his lips in hers. After some time, Fry finally broke away from the kiss and aksed, "So, was I supposed to tell you my answer?"

"I think I figured it out."

And that's about when the ship blew up.

An immense crash sent me flying into space. The screams of Fry and Leela receded into the distance, in opposite directions. Around me I could see the wreckage of the ship.

Along with a series of rocket propelled blenders and coffee machines.

I had enough time to think _How can I hear them?_ when a blender flew right past me.

Everything stopped abruptly when I jerked my head up.

A wall appeared in front of me. Then a floor below me, and a ceiling above me. Boxes and various objects on walls appeared one by one.

In front of me, some text hovered.

**PAUSED**  
**PUSH TO RESUME**

A green circle was underneath those words.

I put my hands to my head and felt something I couldn't see.

So I lifted the VR helmet off my head and found myself lying on the floor of the bedroom in the resort.

I stayed there for a bit before I got it. I'd been playing Sheravone, right? But it must have detected five minutes of inactivity from the user. Then, it did what any computer would do in such a circumstance.

I'd fallen asleep inside a screen saver.

* * *

The photons flooded into my eyes as I stumbled into the living room of our suite. The bedroom had been in darkness, illuminated only by the eyepieces from the VR suit. So once the door opened, I had to slam my eyes shut right away.

It didn't stop my head from throbbing though. The pain immediately gave me something else to think about: was I now dreaming?

This had been the first time I'd been unsure about reality since... well, since ever.

I had those dreams the first few nights after Leela died. But in those dreams, I knew that I was dreaming. Likewise, when I woke up, I knew I was back in reality.

But standing there in the suite, I actually began to wonder. What if I was imagining all this? Could I really be unconscious in the medbay of the _Leela_ – no, it would just be the Planet Express ship – being looked over by Fry and being flown home by a very much alive Leela?

I know the answer now, of course. But at the moment, well, _disorientation_ doesn't do it justice.

"Hey. You're up."

I opened my right eye a little bit. I had to squint with this room so much more brightly lit.

"Spaz girl? You okay?"

As I opened my other eye, I felt BW's arms on my left arm. It pulled me over to my side and sat me down.

I sat there for a moment and said, "Aw, shit, my head." I rubbed my eyes with the bottoms of my palms, succeeding only in making things blurry.

As things came into focus, I could see that BW was seated on the couch to my left. It replied, "You want something? You must be, like, starving."

I was. I felt as though I hadn't eaten in...

"What's today?" I aksed.

The answer caught me completely off guard. BW told me, "It's Tuesday."

My confusion only deepened. I issued my next question very slowly, as though my sanity depended upon the answer. And I'm not entirely sure that it didn't.

"Tuesday... the _what_?"

It rested a hand on my shoulder and looked at me nervously as it said, "The twenty seventh."

"The twenty seventh," I repeated.

I think that was when I knew for sure that I wasn't dreaming. I knew that we'd gotten there on Xmas morning – already two days ago? – having destroyed the robot Santa the day before. That had come at the end of a weeklong vigil at the north pole of Neptune, before which Fry and I had been cleaning out an apartment. We had also made a couple of visits to the sewers underneath New New York, the result of me running down the steps and watching a fight and then firing a gun and watching them fall and running up to her and then trying to drag her away and then listening to her say –

My wild thoughts were interrupted when I felt a hand on my cheek. BW was wiping her thumb – _its_ thumb, if I can ever stop doing that – up the side of my face. When it got to my eye, I felt moisture. She'd been erasing a tear that had been running down.

"Something's bothering you," BW said.

It wasn't aksing me; it was telling me. It continued, "Something besides having played Sheravone for 36 straight hours and then sleeping for 24 straight, I mean."

"I slept a whole day?"

"Yeah. You've still got carpet lines on your face."

"I do?" I looked around for a mirror.

"Come on," it said as it stood up and dragged me into the bathroom. I looked at our reflections in the mirror. I leaned in over the sink and inspected myself more closely.

"I don't see anything," I said.

BW was looking back and forth between the mirror and me. It answered, "Oh, right. It's a smart mirror." It touched a button in the corner of the mirror, and my appearance changed.

I had looked exactly as normal, but abruptly the mirror showed me something different.

My sweat suit had creases all over. The cuffs and the waist seemed to be pressed firmly into my skin, and when I loosened one cuff, I detected a corresponding indentation in my wrist. I had the most historic case of helmet hair, with some parts hanging straight down and other parts sticking straight up. My eyes were in good condition, at least, something you'd expect from a full day's sleep.

Only after looking at all that did I finally see the carpet lines that BW had mentioned. They were on the left side of my face, from next to my eye down past my mouth. They were fairly noticeable, but not nearly as deep as the line on my wrist.

I turned to BW and aksed, "I really slept an entire day?"

"Yeah. And you need some food."

"I sure do," I told it. For a brief moment, I had a mental image of my stomach's fuel gauge, little lines marked between _E_ on the left and _F_ on the right. The needle was way to the left side, about where –½ would be. "I could eat an entire buggalo."

BW smiled and responded, "We almost have an entire buggalo in the refrigerator."

* * *

I was working my way through a plate of lasagna with rhinoceros beef when the doorbell rang. BW, with a muffin in its hand, got up to answer the door.

The door was opened just a crack, and through it I faintly heard, "Hi. Is, um, is Amy Wong here?"

"Who are you?" BW aksed.

"It's Fry!" I called out.

"Who?" BW responded.

I jumped up and hopped over to the door. When I let him in, I grabbed him in a tight hug. He embraced me in return and stroked my back, whispering in my ear, "You kinda ran off on us."

"Yeah. I know. I shouldn't have left you like that."

"It's okay. You probably needed some time to yourself."

We released the hug and stood facing one another.

There was darkness underneath Fry's eyes, which weren't even open all the way. His hair was folded back at an even more ridiculous angle than normal. He looked like he might fall over and go to sleep at any moment.

He said to me, "Man, Amy. You look like you were run over by a truck."

I answered back, "You look like you were driving it."

"Yeah. I've been pretty busy these last couple of days." He turned around and said, "Fry."

BW looked at the hand he was holding out, and then turned around and looked back toward the kitchen.

I sighed and said, "Fr'uh! That's his name!"

"Oh, I gotcha. BW." They shook hands.

"So, um, can I aks something?" Fry murmured.

BW gave an amused smile. "What's that?"

"This is probably gonna sound stupid, but, umm, well, actually I'm probably going to offend you, so maybe I'll just –"

"You're going to aks what gender I am, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry. See, where I come from, I just, well, you know, people look more like... you know..."

"I'm neither."

"Really? Cool! You know, I always wondered if there were people like that. I figured there weren't, because like, when they make robots, they always make guybots and fembots, even though they, you know, they don't reproduce like that, or maybe they do, you know, like maybe they have robots that can reproduce like that, but like, that would be a real tricky engineering problem I'd think, so, like, maybe Amy would know how to do it, but maybe they don't sell well because everyone wants their robots to have a gender because they don't know how to deal with people who don't have a gender, but if that's what people are like, they'd just be big fat hypocrites because they're, like, supposed to be accepting of other ethnic groups and species and stuff, and, you know, maybe there are intelligent species where some people don't have genders, and maybe there are some where nobody has a gender and they just reproduce asexually, or maybe they live so long that they don't need to reproduce, but then how did there get to be so many of them?"

During all this BW stared at him in growing fascination. I told it, "He's always like that."

"Unless I run out," he responded. "Anyway, Bender told me you were here, and so I just wanted to drop by, see how you were."

I was caught by surprise. "How did Bender know where I was?"

"He was playing Sheravone against you, and he looked up where your signal was coming from, or something. However that stuff works."

"I don't remember playing against him."

BW said to me, "You were playing for a day and a half. You must have played, like, five hundred different people."

"A day and a half? Like, all at once?" Fry aksed.

"Yep," BW told him.

"No kidding?"

"Seriously," BW continued. "We got here at about six on Xmas morning. Spaz girl went straight online, I went in and played her a couple of times, and then when I go in at about eighteen yesterday, she's asleep on the floor. Still plugged in."

BW seemed amused, but Fry was looking at me in increasing seriousness.

He didn't seem to want to press the issue. Instead, he just said, "So Amy, how long were you planning on staying here?"

"Actually, I think I'm ready to go back now. Can I come with you?"

"Of course you can."

* * *

Fry carried my bag for me. As we left the building, I said, "How'd you get here?"

He told me, "I took the ship, of course."

"The _Leela_? Who flew?"

"I did."

I stopped and looked at him. "You have a license?"

He reached into his pocket and withdrew his wallet. Along with some money – evidently Bender had stayed behind – were his various cards and probably some pictures. He pulled out his pilot's license. It was a Class 4 license, the same kind I had. It meant we could fly anything up to 250,000 kilograms; the _Leela_ had a dry mass of 120,000 kilograms. Below his ID number, his name, his address, his photograph (slightly less hideous than mine), and his birth date (over a thousand years ago), I saw this notation.

**PRIMARY VESSEL:** PLANET EXPRESS SHIP N9009231808CUI [3]  
**ISSUED:** DEC 09 3003 **EXPIRES:** DEC 09 3005

The three in brackets meant he was registered as third in command. The issue date meant...

"You just got it?"

He showed me a sheepish smile. "I wanted to surprise Leela."

"Well, you surprised _me_, at least."

In the parking garage, the _Leela_ stood along the wall opposite us. We walked past ships of all shapes and sizes, but I reflected that it would be difficult for me to find a helm at which I'd feel more comfortable. Of course, I didn't know enough physics to understand what made her run, but splitting four years between the captain's chair and the engine room had shown me not only what problems could crop up and what to do about them, but also how each kind of problem affected her performance.

And what I'd learned was that not many problems affected her performance greatly.

Fry suddenly pulled me to one side, interrupting my thoughts. He pointed at a column and informed me, "You were about to walk right into that."

"Really?"

"You must _really_ be tired."

"No, I was just thinking about how hard it is to put that ship out of commission," I said as I pointed up to the _Leela_, which we had now reached.

Fry added, "Just like her namesake."

I looked down at my boots as I felt the tears accumulate.

Leela had led us to so many narrow escapes that perhaps Fry and I had started to feel, subconsciously, that she was unstoppable. Anything the Omicronians or the Trisolians could throw at her was laughably trivial compared to her childhood. _An army of ten thousand? I faced that many stupid jokes about my eye between report cards. You think any weapon you're carrying is gonna hurt me worse than that? Fucking bring it._

And what killed her?

Friendly fire.

Some friend I was.

As all this was going through my head, I felt Fry's arms around me. It must have been getting easier and easier to read my moods, not that I had a whole lot of moods to choose from lately.

So, standing there in the shadow of the _Leela_, I clung to him as tightly as I could.

* * *

The _Leela_ had a tiny shower stall in the bathroom. I washed off in there on the way back, trying not to think about the mess I found myself in.

The only child of Martian cattle tycoons, I had a quiet childhood and went on to my hometown college. But it wasn't until I took that internship at Planet Express that I finally felt like I was living my own life. I'd just been freeloading off my parents' money, until I started to make my own bread with my own skills.

More than that, though, I felt like I fit in. For a little bit at first, I was that rich chick from Mars, but once I learned my way around the ship, I discovered that I could solve just about every problem that cropped up. And let's face it, with Fry and Bender around, we were bound to see more and weirder problems than even the most acid-induced engineer could dream up.

And once I established my usefulness, they started to think of me as one of the group. Where else did I ever have even a remote chance of fitting in? In a sorority house with my family's name on the door? In a ranch house so lavishly ornamented that you couldn't even touch anything for fear that it would shrivel up, or implode, or at least get smudged up?

I loved the work, the environment, the city, the company. I'd found a home.

I'd found a life.

And now it was gone.

I continued with such thoughts for quite a while, when suddenly the water turned frigid. With a yelp, I reached around and turned the water off. As I reached for my towel, I ran the other hand through my hair and discovered that it was still all sudsy. I groaned as I held the stall door open and leaned in to rinse my hair out.

Naturally, I was hoping to restrict the ice cold waters to my hair, but it didn't work out that way. When the water hit my hair, it slid down the back of my head, around my neck, down across my nipples, and along my legs before it made a mess on the floor. Finally I shut off the water again, my arms shivering so violently that I could barely manage to dry myself off.

I reached down for my clothes, thought _The hell with it_, and just put on my big fuzzy bathrobe as I made my way up to the bridge.

Fry looked up sharply at me as the door opened. "Hey."

"Hey Fry."

I looked over to my left, at Bender's console, which I also used from time to time. On my right was Fry's console. The couch was to forward. And Fry was at the captain's console.

I tried to pick someplace to sit, but I ended up sitting on the deck next to Fry's seat. As I rested my arm on his right leg and then my head on top of my arm, he said, "So did you run out of hot water?"

"Mm-hmm. Did you hear me yelling all the way up here?"

"No," he told me. "I just noticed you'd been in there a while, and then I saw that."

I looked up to see where he was pointing. Over on his console, a display showed that the hot water tank was at empty.

I aksed him, "How long was I in there?"

"More than an hour," he answered. "We're getting pretty close now."

"How much longer?"

"Half an hour, maybe."

I rested my head on his lap again. He reached through my hair with one hand and started to scratch the back of my head.

I murmured, "So what were you doing when I was away?"

"Making deliveries."

"You were?"

"Yeah. A lot."

"On Xmas?"

"Yeah. Isn't that the single biggest day for a package delivery company?"

"I guess," I said. "With Bender?"

"Yep."

"Where's he now?"

Fry said, "I dropped him off when we got back. He's helping a friend move."

"When did you guys get back?"

"This afternoon."

I puzzled over that. "What time is it now?"

"21:10," he replied.

"Lower?"

There was a pause. "What?"

I clarified, "Could you scratch lower?"

"Oh, yeah. Like that?"

"No no, my lower. Like toward my neck."

"Oh. Right. Like that?"

"Yeah," I said. I let him scratch a bit more, and then I said, "How many packages did you guys deliver?"

"Two hundred eighteen," he answered ruefully.

I sat up, dislodging his hand. I turned around to face him, and he looked down at me, smiled, and shrugged.

"Two hundred eighteen," I repeated in astonishment.

"Yeah."

"But that's, like... I don't know... four every hour?"

He shrugged again. "It was a lot."

I continued, "But we've never made more than, what, ten deliveries in a day? How could we even get that much business?"

"Hermes said they were all supposed to be delivered last week."

Now it made sense. We hadn't made any shipments the previous week. Of course we'd get backed up.

Well, it made a little sense. I aksed Fry, "Did Hermes make you deliver them all at once?"

"Yeah," he told me. "He called me the morning after the party. Got me out of bed, made me come in early, and then I had to fly all across the galaxy delivering those stupid things. I mean, I had to leave Bender in control half the time. I just couldn't keep going that long, you know?"

I nodded. I put my arms back on Fry's leg and rested my head there, again getting a scratch from Fry.

"Man, that stupid Rastafarian bureaucrat," I said, only partly to myself. "He should know you can't make that many deliveries that fast. I'm talking to him tomorrow."

Fry didn't say anything. In the meantime I sank further into his lap.

"Heard you broke up with Kif."

"Yeah."

"Must have been tough for you."

"Yeah. It was."

"Must have been tough for him."

"Yeah. Have you seen him?"

"No."

"Hope I didn't break his heart. I mean, he can be really sweet. It's just, he can also be such a jerk."

"I know."

I lifted up my weary head and looked at him. He was still staring ahead, flying the ship. I said, "You do? How do you know that?"

He told me, "Remember when Bender and I were in the military?"

"Yeah."

"I was assigned to him for a while. He was just a fucking bastard. I mean, he was all like 'Scrub that tile again, dammit! I still see ten parts per million of contaminants on there!' And then ten minutes later, 'Why the hell didn't you scrub that tile, soldier?' And I'd be like, 'I did scrub it, sir!' And he'd be all like, 'No, not that one! Anyone can see that tile's clean already!'"

"That's a good Kif impersonation. Can you do anybody else?"

"I didn't even know I could do Kif."

"Hm. You know, I always liked people who could do voices like that."

There was silence for a couple of minutes, and then I broke it. "So do you think I should have?"

"Should have what?"

"Broken up with him?"

"I dunno. Were you happy with him?"

"I _was_."

"You mean until you met his unpleasant side?"

I gave a tiny little snorting laugh. "Such euphemisms. 'Unpleasant side'. Yeah, I just hate when I don't get treated with respect."

"Me too. That's why I like it here."

"Yeah. So do I," I answered, finding it odd how the conversation was now turning exactly where my thoughts had been going when I was in the shower.

But it stopped there, with both of us seemingly too tired to continue. In a few minutes he roused me and said, "We're here."

I stood up and stumbled a couple of steps toward the door. Fry told me, "Don't forget your bag."

I looked down at my bag. It was open, which confused me until I remembered that my clothes were still back in the bathroom. I said, "Yeah, I gotta go change too."

He left the ship, and once I'd changed and put my bathrobe away, I exited as well and found him at the conference table. Without a word, he stood up and escorted me out of the building – which appeared to be empty. Except for the Professor, of course, who was undoubtedly snoring away somewhere on the floors above us.

When we got to the street corner, he looked to the west, toward his apartment, and I looked to the south, toward mine. Then we looked back at each other.

He put a hand on my shoulder. "Well, sleep tight."

"Yeah, you too."

He started to shuffle off. I called out, "Hey."

He turned around.

"Don't fall asleep in the tube on your way back."

He smiled. "Can't guarantee that."

* * *

The doorbell rang.

"Hey sis," Leela said as I let her in.

"Hey yourself. Let me get that." I plucked the carton of ice cream from her hand and hit the button on the side. With a _bzap_, the container froze the ice cream, chilling right in my hand.

"Anything on?" she aksed.

"Nope. Unless you want to see _The Morbo Life_."

She groaned. "God. That's just unwatchable."

She settled on the couch as I went to the kitchen to grab a pair of spoons.

"Get me a _big_ spoon."

I came back and tossed her a soup spoon. It bounced off her thumb and then her shoulder before it slipped behind the couch.

"Goddammit." She climbed up onto the couch and reached behind it. "Aw, where the fuck..."

"Let me get another one."

"No, it's down here somewhere. Just need... here." She handed it to me, and I took it back to wash it off.

"Thank you," she said as I gave it back. "So what's new?"

"Broke up with Kif."

"Yeah. Didn't see that coming."

"After the way he treated me? You had to."

"No, I mean what he was doing to you. I didn't know he could be like that."

"Fry did, apparently."

"That's right, they served together. How is he?"

"Kif?"

"Fry."

I slipped another spoonful of rocky road into my mouth. It wasn't my favourite, but Leela liked the richer flavours.

I answered, "Don't know. He seems like he's doing okay. Better than me."

"You sure?"

"Hm?"

She pointed her spoon at me. "Keep an eye on him. He's always reluctant to show his feelings."

"Like you?"

"Exactly. All this may be harder on him than he lets on."

"You think so?"

"Yeah. I mean, I know him better than anyone, except maybe Bender. And now you're starting to feel for him, too."

"It's that obvious?"

"You're not hiding it very well."

I didn't answer. I just went back to the ice cream.

She continued, "You've got to give him time. You two could be happy together, but let him recover first. Wait until he's ready."

"Yeah, but when will that be?"

She shrugged. "I'unno."

We pulled a couple more spoonfuls from the ice cream.

"Leela."

"Yeah?"

"Were you really going to propose to him?"

"Like in your other dream?"

"Mm-hmm."

She licked off her spoon and examined it for a couple of minutes, turning it around and around in her hand.

"I... don't know. I'm pretty sure that he was thinking about it. I didn't want to just jump in, though. I thought I'd have plenty of time to decide." She laughed dryly. "Wrong, wrong, wrong."

"And you're telling _me_ to wait?"

"Yeah. I'm such a hypocrite, am I not?"

I reclined on the couch, not saying anything to that.

She sighed. "I, well, I don't want you to make the same mistakes I did. The game's changed now, though. You're playing under different rules. So, you know, listening to me might not help."

Then she stood up and took my hands, pulling me to my feet. "You'll have to figure it all out on your own, I guess."

She turned away toward the door, but then she turned back. "You know where to find me if you need me, right?"

"In my dreams?"

"Yeah." She kissed my cheek, turned, and left.

* * *

I woke up really early, around seven. Usually when I'm up that early, I stay in bed for a while and don't do anything.

Nonetheless, I did crawl out of bed. In a moment I found myself in front of the pile of stuff we'd collected when we cleaned out Leela's apartment.

Damn, _that_ had been a trying day.

I had more available space, so apart from a few things that clearly belonged with Fry or with her parents, most everything was stacked up here. The clothes were going to go to charity, and we planned to keep what little else there was. Just looking through her place was eye opening.

Sorry. That was a lousy choice of words.

Anyway, she had always kept a little bit of herself hidden from everyone else. For instance, I'd been kind of amused to discover her small collection of about ten porn films. Each had a slip attached to it, wherein she had apparently rated them in categories like exoticness, nastiness, and humour. They were now in one box in the corner, with a couple of sex toys that were in exceptional condition. Either she made infrequent use of them, or she routinely cleaned them.

Knowing her, I was prepared to entertain either possibility.

I spotted something else I'd taken notice of earlier, a fairly old, ratty teddy bear. It was one of those static teddy bears, not like the dynamic ones they make today that are actually robots with cuddly exteriors. You couldn't talk to it, have a tea party with it, or program it to say dirty words. About all you could do was hug it.

I hugged it. I hugged it like there was nothing else in the Universe to hug.

I brought it back to my bed, casting my gaze at its one unique feature.

This teddy bear had only one eye.

I'd had a teddy bear with one eye, but that's because the other one fell off. This one was made with one eye, and as I lay down on my bed, I wondered, just as I had when I found it in her closet, where and how she'd acquired it. These days, you could have just about anything custom made, but it didn't strike me that she would be likely to request something like that. She didn't usually want to call anyone's attention to her distinguishing feature, not even her own attention.

To me it seemed more likely that it was a gift. Not from Fry – I aksed him. He admitted that he could be insensitive, but not that insensitive. His exact words were, "I don't generally like having large boots striking my chin at high speeds."

I must have spent five hours lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, because when Fry called, it was just past noon.

Anybody else, and I wouldn't have answered.

"Hey Fry."

"Hey Amy. Whatcha doing?"

"Nothing."

"Plans for tonight?"

"No."

"Well, the Turangas invited us over for dinner tonight. Are you up for that?"

"Sure," I answered. "That sounds good."

"Okay. What time do you want?"

"I don't really care."

"Early? Late? In between?"

"Around, like, seventeen?"

"Okay. I'll tell them. Want me to come get you?"

"No, I'll meet you down there."

"Do you know where they live?"

"It's in my wrist."

"Really?" he aksed.

"Yeah. It saves my movements over the past few weeks, so I can have it show me the route we took last time."

"Wow. You know," he said, "at first I thought I'd never get used to the future. Then I figured I would eventually. Now I think I was right in the first place."

I smiled but didn't answer.

"Well, anyway, I'll see you tonight."

"Yep. Bye."

"Bye Amy."

* * *

I hit the buzzer at Hermes's office, but when the door opened up, he was nowhere to be seen.

So I meandered around the building, eventually making my way down to the hangar floor.

"Amy! How was your vacation?"

I looked up and saw the Professor in his laboratory. I called up to him, "Okay."

"Well, good. Do you have a few minutes?"

"Actually, have you seen Hermes?"

"No. I don't think he's coming in today. Anyway, would you mind coming up here? I'd like to spend some time chatting with you like the caring employer that I am, for reasons completely unrelated to this remarkable device I just invented that needs some guinea pig to test it."

I sighed. "Fine."

"And on your way up, could you get that jar of Zoidberg's urine sample from the kitchen?"

_Eeeeeeuugh_.

I trudged up the steps, lugging the three kilogram jar of nastiness. When I reached the lab, Professor Farnsworth looked over from the bench.

"Good lord, Amy! What the devil is that foul container?"

"Zoidberg's urine sample? Spr'uh! Where do you want it?"

"What? I don't want that horrible sludge! Throw it out!"

I groaned. This was one problem I frequently ran into in my dealings with the Professor.

He continued, "Anyway, I've called you up here so you could see this."

I looked over at the thing he was pointing to. It looked like a long wire with some sort of probe at one end, like maybe a digital pH meter.

As I walked over to examine it more closely, he said, "Go ahead. Try it out."

I looked over at him quizzically. "How? Better question, what the hell is it?"

"Well, you remember that program you wrote that characterises someone's brainwave patterns?"

I nodded. A couple of years ago, he had me write some code that would generate a model of someone's personality and memory contents based upon brainwaves. I'd assumed it wouldn't come to anything.

Actually, at the moment, I was still assuming that.

The Professor went on, "This device is the collector for the brainwave patterns. You stick it in your ear, and then a bunch of nanobots run out, detect the brainwaves in various strategic locations throughout the brain, and then run back and report the results. Think of it as a bunch of nanobots running out, detecting the brainwaves in various strategic locations throughout the brain, and then running back and reporting the results."

"So? Brainwave detectors have been around a long time."

"Ah, but that's only part of the story!" His eyes would probably be glimmering right now were it not for the thick glasses that stood guard in front of them. "Once the brainwave patterns are read, they're transferred to that computer over there, where your program runs. Then, you can save the resulting brain model into an AI engine, which instantiates a new instance of that brain model."

I stood there for a bit, digesting this information. "You mean... you can clone someone's brain?"

"What? Who said anything about cloning? There's no cloning going on here! That all happens over there!" He waved his hand at the tank that Cubert had come out of.

"So... if you're not cloning, what do you do with the model?"

"Confound it Amy, I don't have time to explain every little detail to your cute, misunderstanding ears!"

"Yes you do."

"Oh my, yes, that's right. I always forget that I'm absent minded. Anyway, this process creates a strictly software based model of someone's brain. You could run it on any computer anywhere, plug it into the Internet, and it would behave exactly like you. Care to try it out?"

The whole idea weirded me out. Regardless of what the Professor said, it did sound like cloning to me. You could actually interact with a completely identical copy of yourself, at least online.

So why did I then plug myself in and create a model of myself?

Yes, it was creepy, but I was also quite intrigued. What would happen if you were running yourself on a PC? Wouldn't you run much faster than the human brain nominally runs? Or would the added complexity of the computations slow you down? I'd taken a class on AI, but that was a long time ago. I had to figure, at least, that it would be able to access much, much more information than a normal human brain, at ridiculous speeds.

I saved it, but I didn't run it. I just encrypted it with three different schemes, including a megabit scheme that I don't think even the DOOP government had.

Hey, I'm not stupid. I won't trust just anyone with my brain.

Before I left, the Professor interrogated me about its workings. Are you still alive? Yes. Excruciating pain? No. Dream sequences? No. Can I see the results? Hell no.

* * *

"Five. Can you believe that? Five times. You probably never knew that, did you?"

I looked around and nearly couldn't believe my eyes.

My route to the Turangas' house took me past the lakeshore where Leela's funeral was held.

Shit. Leela's funeral.

Just writing those two words together tears me apart.

Anyway, the place looked different, and not because it was packed with folding chairs last time. There were other changes.

The ridge where the casket had been now held a low brick wall, about a metre high. Flowers, newspapers, cards, and even a couple of balloons were placed along its length. None of the flowers seemed more than a few days old.

At one end of the wall, a sign stood.

**Future site of  
TURANGA LEELA  
MEMORIAL PARK**

There was some sort of sketch of the completed park underneath, but I instead turned my attention to the waterfront, or the sewagefront I guess. That was where I saw Fry.

He was sitting a good distance from the water, because of its mutagenic properties, and he had his arms folded on his knees.

He continued, "But it's true. There were five times when I came back home, sat on my bed, and told myself I'd leave you alone for good. And once, I actually did for, like, two months. You remember that?"

He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "You're probably wondering about my hand, aren't you?"

I tried to see over his shoulder, but I didn't want to get too close and disturb him. I couldn't see his hand.

"I, well, I punched out a window earlier today."

I stood up on an impulse, but then I sat down again and tried to keep quiet.

I listened to him say, "I've just, you know, I've just been so mad about the way everything happened. Like how I kept chasing after you, and how I'd always do something incredibly romantic by accident, and then when I tried to do something romantic, I'd always mess it up and then you'd be even more repulsed at me.

"And then, of course, we finally get together, you know, and it's... it's... well... I can't think of the right word. All I can think of is _unreal_. Because, you know, I had so many dreams about waking up next to you, and then when I actually did wake up next to you, I almost didn't know how to react. It was like I was watching myself on TV, or on the What-If machine, or something.

"And then after that, well, you know what happened after that."

He sniffled, and when he started to talk again, his voice was weak and scratchy.

"You know what was really hard? Today I was saying to myself, 'Why did Amy have to go and ruin everything?'

"I mean, it's not her fault. It's not. Seems like she thinks it is, and I want to tell her not to be so hard on herself, but I don't want to press it either. Because I know it's really hard for her to talk about it.

"Actually, it's really hard for me to talk about it too. I've talked to Bender some. He's taking it especially hard, because, you know, because he... hm... I guess I don't know why. I mean, you never seemed that close to him."

He fell silent for a little longer.

Then he cleared his throat and said, "And you know what else? I think now Amy's got a thing for me again."

I thought, _Damn, does everybody know now?_

"She broke up with Kif," he added. "You know how sometimes he can just be overbearing and impatient?

"Actually, maybe you don't. He was like that to me when we were in the military. And then Amy just saw him like that for the first time. That was when we were on your mission."

I was kind of feeling guilty spying on Fry like this, but there wasn't really anything else for me to do while I waited for him. And I have to admit that I was curious to hear what he said when he thought nobody was around.

"Anyway, I might just be misinterpreting the way she's been acting around me, but... I don't know. I mean, if she is falling for me, what do I do?"

He paused again. "I... I can't love her. I love _you_. I always will. I mean, you were... you were everything. You were the reason I got up in the morning, you were the one who never looked down on me because of where I came from, you were the one I'd scratch dirty limericks about into the walls of bathrooms..."

He trailed off.

I briefly wondered which of us was shedding more tears.

Then he stood up, still facing the water. I saw that one hand had a cluster of flowers.

He spoke again, a bit louder. "These are for you." He hurled them out into the lake and out of sight.

"I know, they're not nearly as beautiful as you are. They'll have to do."

He turned around and saw me. He held up a hand as he walked over, and then he pulled me to my feet and gave me a hug in one motion.

"Hey Fry."

"Hey Amy. What did you do all day?"

I shrugged. "Not much. Cried my eyes out."

He shrugged. "Me too. You just get here?"

"Yeah," I lied.

He looked down at the ground, where I'd placed the bottle of wine I brought. He picked it up, and I saw what he was talking about. He had a bandage wrapped around the knuckles of his right hand, with little red spots on each finger.

I touched his hand. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just a little accident at home today." He read from the label, "Alpha Draconis Hyperchardonnay, 2866. Any good?"

"The first kind I ever had."

"Really?"

"Yep. When I was fifteen." As he giggled, I added, "Don't tell my parents."

* * *

When Mr Turanga let us in, he naturally wasn't as jovial as the previous time. Inside, their house looked much the same. One difference was what appeared to be a pile of papers in the corner. Closer inspection showed that they were condolence cards.

As I knelt down to examine them, Mrs Turanga said, "I swear, we must have gotten one of those from everyone in this sewer."

I turned to her and aksed, "So how many people are there down here?"

She turned to Mr Turanga. "What did they say at the last census? Ten thousand?"

"Around eleven thousand, I thought," Mr Turanga responded.

For some reason I'd expected more than that. Above the surface, New New York's population was pushing a hundred million. That meant...

Fry said, "So for every person in the New New York sewers, there's, like, ten thousand on the surface?"

"Something like that, yeah," said Mrs Turanga.

"Why's the population so low? Is there just not enough food or fresh water?"

Mrs Turanga sat on the side of the couch. "No, that's not a problem." She pointed a tentacle toward the kitchen and aksed, "Morris, check the grill, would you?"

I said, "So what are we having?"

"Barbecued pork."

"You can get that down here?"

"Of course. We get it from South Carolina," she told me. "Those truck drivers aren't afraid to go into the sewers, like New New Yorkers are."

From the next room, Mr Turanga called, "That's because some of those truck drivers fit right in down here!" He started to laugh, and Fry joined in. I even laughed a little bit at his joke.

* * *

For a few hours, at least, I was able to put my sadness away.

It seems counterintuitive, right? If you wanted to avoid having to think about Leela, would you go to her parents' house?

But it worked. I listened with rising interest as Fry queried the Turangas about living in the sewers, the people they knew, the community's history, and the other cities that had mutant populations in their sewers – NeoKyoto and Madrid also had sizeable communities, though not as large as New New York's.

Later, after they brought out the chocolates, Fry aksed a question that had bothered me from time to time during the evening. "We talked earlier about the size of the population."

"Right," Mrs Turanga responded.

"So... why is the population so low? Couldn't a lot more people live down here?"

Mr Turanga told us, "Yeah, at a lecture I went to a couple of weeks ago, one of the profs said that the sewers could support at least a million people. Maybe more if we dug ourselves some new tunnels."

"Well then, what _is_ keeping the population down? Do people just not want to have kids?"

Mrs Turanga replied, "No, trust me, _everyone_ wants to have kids."

Fry looked at me. When he saw that I was just as confused, he shook his head. "I don't get it. It doesn't seem to add up."

Hesitatingly, Mrs Turanga said, "Well, you see, there's ..."

The whole time I'd been looking out the window, toward Lake Mutagenic. Suddenly I got it. "Is it sterility?"

"That's part of it," she agreed. "Something like fifty percent of the population down here is sterile."

Fry and I stared, wide eyed. He spoke first, expressing my thoughts precisely: "_Fifty percent?!_"

I continued from there. "So, wait. That means the fertile couples have to have four kids each just to maintain a steady state?"

Mrs Turanga added, "And that's not the whole story. It's hard even for fertile people to have kids."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, assume you can actually get to conception," she said. "Then you have a zygote that's carrying a mix of chromosomes from the parents, right?"

We nodded. It seemed even Fry knew enough biology to follow along.

"Well, there's no guarantee that that genome will actually result in a viable person, even for normal humans. But for us, we already have such unlikely genomes that we're barely able to survive, if you want to think of it like that. So you mix up the parents' DNA, and you may end up with a combination that's so abnormal it won't even have a chance."

Mr Turanga nodded. "Munda and I tried for about two years."

His wife carried on, "The gynecologists say there's no telling how many embryos die and get flushed out while they're still microscopic. There are so many stillborn kids, and then infant mortality rates are so high in the first year or so, because even with the mutations, it's so hard to adjust to the environment down here."

Mr Turanga continued, "And once a kid is born, you have to go through and make a list of the mutations you can see, and then keep watch for others that may show up later in life. There are so many strange things that can just crop up out of nowhere. Like... you know Raoul?"

I didn't, but Fry said, "He's the guy with..." and raised his arm up to the side of his head.

"Yeah," Mr Turanga nodded. Then I remembered him. He was the guy with a third arm instead of a right ear that I'd seen at the funeral.

"Anyway, he's the first one we'd ever seen like that. Not his parents, or his grandparents, or anyone. I mean, you never know what your kids are going to look like."

He trailed off into silence, and Fry and I looked at one another again.

Fry echoed my thoughts once more. "So then, that's why... when you had..."

He pointed his thumb upward, toward the surface.

Mr and Mrs Turanga nodded slowly, synchronously.

"We had the chance of a lifetime," Mrs Turanga said. "We weren't going to let it pass."

* * *

"So did you see the plans for the park?"

"No, what's it like?"

As we left for home, Fry led me back to the place that I was now starting to think of as Leela's gravesite. I took a moment to inspect the artist's rendering of the completed park.

"Damn," I said.

"Pretty impressive, isn't it?" Fry responded.

The wall that the sign adjoined was going to be part of some kind of fountain. It looked as though water would cascade down the side of the wall and then flow down the ridge in a narrow pool. The picture displayed a few mutant kids splashing around in it.

The open space further inland, where the chairs had been set up, was apparently going to become a blernsball field. The players looked like high schoolers – the Turangas had mentioned that there were two high schools down here. Amongst the variously shaped players, I could identify at least two women, one in left field and one of the blernrunners. The bleachers were packed, and various pennants were in the spectators' hands. From the picture's perspective, viewing from behind the outfield fence toward the lake, a black rectangle stood behind the fence. Presumably the other side was the scoreboard.

It was no Central Park, naturally. But it was the most advanced piece of architecture I'd seen down here. The sign named the designers and the builders, names of mutants I didn't recognise, at the bottom.

I turned my attention back to the most obvious feature of the park, and it was exactly what you'd expect to see in a place called Turanga Leela Memorial Park.

It looked like bronze, maybe a bit larger than life sized. It stood in the centre of the square pool at the end of the wall, with water collecting around a platform on which the boots stood.

I ran my finger across the picture and settled next to the statue. "I like the pose."

"It does look like her, doesn't it?"

She had her hands at the back of her hips, fingers pointing down, thumbs around her sides. She was standing up straight, or perhaps leaning forward a little, and she had a narrowed eye and a smile that was confident, bordering on threatening.

I aksed, "They're going to have sewer water flowing in that fountain?"

"I guess so," he said. "They're mutants. The hell do they care?"

"I care."

He shrugged.

* * *

When I got home that night, it was already past 22:00. As I settled on the bed, I read through a couple of news items. Then, when I reached over to my wrist again, I found something else next to me: the cyclopic teddy bear.

At that time I finally pieced it together. It was a gift from her parents. Why else would she keep it around for so long?

I thought back to the first time Leela and I had gone out together. As the ship landed late one Friday, Fry and Bender raced down the steps and out the door. That was a couple of months after the three of them joined the company, a little after Fry moved into Bender's closet and they started going to parties and stuff together.

Leela trailed after, heading over to her locker. "Hey Amy."

"Hey Leela. How'd it go?"

She gave a noncommittal grunt. "Been ready for this weekend for a long time."

"Got anything going on tonight?"

She pulled her green jacket out of the locker. "There's a billiard hall that just opened up near my place. Thought I might check it out."

"Mind if I come?"

She looked over at me. "You play?"

"Sort of."

"Sure, why not."

She let me pick dinner. As we came back from the buffet line at whatever Chinese place it was – I think it's closed down now – I aksed her, "So what about Fry? He really likes you."

She rolled her eye. "Yeah, but he's so dense. I mean, today he opened a pressurised can of whoopass on the bridge. It just got _everywhere_. I had to pull over for an hour while he cleaned off the windshield. And then he got streaks all over it, so I had to squeegee it again."

"Bl'eesh, Leela. Cut him some slack. I mean, they didn't even have spaceships in his time."

"Yeah they did."

"They did?"

"_Yes_," she sighed, clearly nettled at my ignorance. "He was born, like, five years after the first person landed on the Moon. He grew up wanting to be an astronaut. He says that all the freaking time. Hasn't he mentioned that to you?"

I shook my head.

She put down the egg roll and continued, "It's not like he's stupid. I mean, sometimes, he can be really thoughtful. It's more that... he doesn't always think things through, you know?"

"Well, I think that's kinda cute."

"Ugh. _Cute_ isn't the word I'd use."

"You don't think he's cute?"

"Well, he is that, but in more of a fifteen-year-old-crush sort of way, you know? I mean, I'm twenty four. I want the sort of relationship that can actually progress _beyond_ the stage of making out in the janitor's closet."

I started to giggle. I actually imagined making out in the janitor's closet with Fry right then. I could picture him looking over my shoulder and whispering, "Not so loud! They'll hear us!"

I said to her, "There's something to be said for making out in the janitor's closet."

"_Anyway_, it still wouldn't work. We're different species."

"Really? What are you?"

She looked out the window. "I don't know."

"Whaddya mean you don't know? How can you not know your own species?"

Her voice had dropped down to a faint whisper. "I was left on the steps of an orphanarium at birth. There was a note, but nobody could even figure out what language it was in." She looked down at a piece of sweet and sour pork in her chopsticks and growled, "I could be from anywhere in the fucking universe."

After that she changed the subject. Not wanting to press her, I just told her about Mars U and some of the classes I was taking that term. Then we went on to the billiard hall, a tiny place called Capital T Which Rhymes with P. Neither of us really got that.

Inside, there was row upon row of tables. Hazy smoke filled the air, though we couldn't actually see anyone smoking. Leela said something about a law that said pool halls had to have smoke generators.

We picked a table in the back corner, and after she'd beaten me a couple of times, I said to her, "Wow, you're pretty good with angles and stuff."

She glared at me and responded, "So?"

"Well, I mean, it's just, I wouldn't have expected that, because of..."

"Because of what? My eye?"

"Well... yeah."

I handed her the cue ball, and as she walked past, she whacked me on the side of my head with her cue stick. I bent down over the table, shouting, "_Owwww!_ Watch it, Leela!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. It must be my _depth perception_," she said deliberately. "I do have _problems_ with it."

"All right, I'm sorry, okay! Geez! Where'd you learn to make friends? Brooklyn?"

She looked over at me, sighed, and hung her head. Before she could say anything to me, I heard someone behind us say, "Hey there, sweetcheeks."

There was a guy, about my age and a little shorter than Leela, leering at me. Two other guys were with him. _Frat boys_, I thought.

The first one turned to Leela and gawked for a moment before he said, "Exotic. I like that. So what are a couple of foxy chicks like yourselves doing playing with yourselves?" The other two laughed at his eighth grade humour.

Leela cast an irritated glance at him. "You saying we should play you instead?"

One of his wingmen, who had spiked hair, said, "Yeah. You'll love playing with him."

I shot back, "How would _you_ know about playing with him?"

The first and third guys started to laugh at the second guy. Leela told them, "Nah, I don't think it'll be that interesting. Unless you'd like to _make_ it interesting."

The first guy said, "Like how?"

"Tell you what," she answered. "Two of you guys against us two. If you win, you" – she pointed at the first one, with the gap in his teeth – "can kiss anybody you want. If we win, I get to kiss anybody _I_ want." She finished with a pointed glance at the third guy, who had his obviously dyed purple hair in a moptop.

"You got it," Gaptooth said. He handed Spike a cue as Fuchsia leaned up against the wall.

I took Leela aside and whispered up at her, "The hell are you doing?"

She whispered back, "Just go with me." Leela gave Gaptooth the cue ball. "Why don't you guys break."

Gaptooth didn't sink any on the break, leaving Leela with a couple of good shots. She potted a stripe that had been sitting in front of one of the corner pockets, and then she called a combo, pointing to the nine and fifteen which were both sitting along the side. She gave it a solid shot, with the fifteen in and the nine chasing in after it.

She missed her next shot, and then Spike sank a solid. Then when he scratched, getting a ribbing from his cohorts, I was up.

Most of our stripes were along the back, so with the cue ball at the other end, there wasn't much I could do. I hit at one of them and brought it back toward one of the side pockets.

I stood next to Leela. "Couldn't do anything."

She nodded. "Freed them up. That's all you needed to do."

Gaptooth put in another one, but when he missed on the next one, Leela had a clear look at the ball I'd just freed from the end. She sank it and let the cue ball carry to the back, where our other three were still lined up. As she walked past, she held a fist out, and I tapped it with mine.

For this one, the cue ball was between two of ours. She could try to combo the last ball off one, or put in the other. Either way, she'd have to have her cue stick at an angle to avoid the other ball.

She stood at one corner of the table and leaned over the pair. With a thumb standing precariously next to the other ball, she rested her cue on her hand and pushed it down. The ball skipped off each side of the pocket but didn't go in.

She stood with her arms crossed, her cue under one elbow. "Crap."

I held a fist out. "Freed them up."

As she tapped my fist, Spike looked over his situation. His best look was the seven, sitting in the middle of the table. He went for the far corner but missed.

So I had the cue ball at one corner, a ball sitting by the other corner, and two more on the adjacent wall. I had to go for the one at the corner.

Leela said, "Go for the middle." When I looked up at her, she was holding her hands out, her fingertips meeting at an angle.

I went for the middle – right between the ball and the wall – and hit it in. The cue ball carried toward the pocket but came to rest just outside.

As I came around the table, I found the other two balls right in line with the pocket.

"Combo," I called as I lined it up. I didn't want to hit it too hard and have the cue ball carry in, but I didn't want to try to apply backspin either. In the end I just hit it and let the ball go where it must.

The cue hit the first, which then slammed into the second. That ball went in, with the other two still chasing behind it. The cue caught up with the remaining ball again and nudged it into the pocket, with the cue deflecting a bit to the left and to the wall.

So then it was just me and the eight.

The eight ball was on the far side of the table, still on the right half, but too far from the wall to go for the pocket in that corner. I pointed to the corner opposite me but just hit the eight straight on to avoid the scratch.

We tapped fists again. "Good stuff Amy. We got them now."

Gaptooth put in two, and when he missed his next one, the cue was left behind the eight, with both right on the line down the middle of the table. Leela could go for either corner, and chose the left one. She gave a light touch, and the eight rolled slowly toward the pocket. With seemingly its last electron volt of energy, it rolled off the edge into the pocket.

Meanwhile, the cue ball rolled just as slowly toward the other pocket. But it caromed off one wall and settled in front of the other.

"Okay, so who are you gonna kiss?" Gaptooth aksed resignedly.

Fuchsia looked up at Leela and then shyly away. She looked at him, and then back toward the other two. I could tell she liked making a show of it.

I was about to turn away so I wouldn't have to watch her kiss Fuchsia, but she suddenly grabbed me between my legs and lifted me up. As she kissed me, I tried to say, "Leela, get the hell off me!" But it sounded more like, "Meimuh, mimm mhh mmm... mm..."

I could hear one of the frat boys saying, "Dude, that's fucking awesome."

That wasn't the first time I'd kissed a girl. But it was the first time with someone I really cared about.

I mean, even then I could tell that we would end up best friends. And for one short moment, at least, I wondered if we might go beyond that.

I gripped her breasts through her tank top as she opened her mouth and extended her tongue. We let our tongues wrap around one another before she put me down. She picked up her jacket and led me out of there, arm in arm.

As we left, I heard someone say, "_Told_ you this was a gay pool hall."

Leela started to snigger as we walked out, but when we turned the corner, she howled with laughter. "Oh, man! That was hilarious! Did you _see_ that idiot's face?"

"No, I wasn't looking."

"Damn. I wasn't either. I was hoping you saw." She leaned up against the wall and tried to collect her breath.

I said, kind of to myself, "Yeah, that was great."

Leela looked over at me, the mirth slowly disappearing from her face. She straightened up and looked at me quizzically. Then her eye opened up, and she put a hand to her mouth, saying, "Oh, shit. Shit, Amy, I didn't think about... I didn't realise you were a lesbian. Because I'm not. I mean, it's okay if you are, but... I don't want you to think I was... I just wanted to show up those jerks. I wasn't..."

She trailed off and looked down at the ground. I was about to reply before she started to talk again.

"Shit. I'm sorry, Amy. I... I..." She shook her head and started to turn away. "Maybe I should just..."

"Leela, it's okay," I said to her. "I don't mind. It _was_ hilarious."

"You don't mind?"

"It's okay, really. And I am straight."

"Oh. Well, maybe then I shouldn't tell you that I actually kind of liked it."

"So did I."

"You did? Really?"

I nodded.

She leaned in toward me, and we kissed again.

Then we looked at one another.

"I didn't feel it that time," she told me.

"No, nothing," I answered.

* * *

Just then, my wrist rang, snapping me back to reality. With my arm still around the teddy bear, I checked my wrist. Again, I wouldn't have answered for anyone else.

"Fry. Hey."

"Hey. Can I talk to you?"

"Of course you can. What's on your mind?"

"Nothing, really. I was about to get mutated."

"Mutated? What do you mean?"

"I was just gonna jump into Lake Mutagenic."

I sat up sharply. "You _what?!_"

He answered calmly, as though he'd already thought it through. "You know, so I can be a mutant."

"What the hell are you talking about, Fry?" I shouted. "You don't want to be one of those fucked up freak jobs!"

There was silence.

"Fry? You there?"

He answered, softly, "Why not? I married one."

"Fry, where are you?"

"I'm standing on a pier down here. I'm looking into the water right now."

_Oh shit_, I thought in a panic. _Don't say anything stupid_.

I cleared my throat. "Fry. Don't."

He answered back, "Why?"

"Well, for one thing, what if you mutate into something that can't swim?"

"I'm prepared for that eventuality."

"Okay, well, what if you do survive? You won't be able to live on the surface. What will you do?"

"I'll live down here, of course."

"And do what?"

"Amy, this is where I belong."

"You belong up here!"

"I don't belong up there. It's not my world. I came to the future by mistake."

"Of course you belong up here, Fry. What about your job?"

He scoffed, "My job? I'm a delivery boy. The easiest fucking job there is, and I can't even do that right."

"What about your friends?"

"What friends? I never see Bender any more. It's like he doesn't know what to do with himself."

"Well... what about me?"

He said, "It's not about you, Amy. This is something I have to do."

I took a deep breath. "No, Fry. You don't have to do it."

"Give me one good reason why not."

I was right about to talk when I realised where he was coming from. I _couldn't_ come up with a good reason why not. Except...

Through a dry throat, I said, "Me."

"What about you?"

I hesitated again before I said to him, "Fry, look. I need you around. My life is a mess right now. If you leave, I'll... I'll..."

He interrupted. "Amy, quit fooling yourself. I'm not that important to you. You've got other friends."

"No, I don't."

"Sure you do. What about that androgyne you ran off with?"

"I didn't run off with BW. I just, you know, I had to get away for a little bit."

When he didn't answer, I went on, "But Fry, you know when I first made a real friend?"

"When?"

"When you showed up. I know everyone always thinks of me as some rich bitch who cares more about cars and jewels than about people.

"But I hated the way my parents live. I was growing up in a place I couldn't stand, just waiting until I became old enough to get away from them. And then when you and Bender and Leela joined the company, I... well, I liked you guys. It seemed like you were just like me.

"You know, you came from someplace you hated, just hoping that eventually you'd find somewhere you could act normal, and nobody would judge you. You'd just be, you know, just someone. Instead of some weird freak that everyone would stare at and make you all nervous and self conscious.

"And Fry, if you jump into the lake now, yeah, you'll be a mutant, but you won't be one of them. You know?

"Because I know you. You love flying in space. I mean, you always stare down at Earth as it recedes away, and then you keep on staring out the window as stars and clusters and stuff go by. And when we arrive at a planet, you're always enraptured by the approach in. You always look to see how many moons the planet has, right? Whether it has rings? Whether it has a thick or a thin atmosphere? If there are a lot of clouds? Whether it has ice caps? Whether it has a lot of large cities? What kind of traffic patterns it has? You know?"

I hadn't intended to keep on talking like that. But when I started to tell him about how I felt, I kind of forgot that he was a half second away from jumping into the water and becoming who knows what.

He said, slowly, "I guess, but... what am I supposed to do?"

"Why don't you come to my place?"

"Your place?"

"Yeah. It'll be fun. We'll make pancakes and everything."

There was another long pause before I heard him say, "All right. I'll see you in a little bit."

"Wait, Fry."

"What?"

"Don't hang up."

So we kept talking as he made his way back to the surface and then to my building. When he came to the door, I stared at him for a moment.

"What?" he aksed.

"Just wanted to make sure you haven't mutated." I pulled him into an embrace and rested my forehead on his shoulder. "God, Fry, don't scare me like that again."

"I'll try not to."

I let him pour the mix onto the griddle, which explains how we ended up with rectangular pancakes.

We scraped them onto our plates and moseyed over to the living room, where I turned on the television set. "Want to see if _All My Circuits_ is on?"

He shook his head. "I just can't watch that any more. You know? I feel like I'm living it."

"Hmm. Yeah, I sorta know what you mean."

We looked through the channels, but we couldn't find anything interesting. I switched off.

"Amy, can I aks you something?"

"You know you can."

"You remember the day... you know."

I nodded. There was only one day he could be talking about. The day Leela died.

"You remember before, when you and I were talking in my cabin?"

"Yeah."

"You said something about if she didn't love me, she was a hypocrite."

"Yeah."

"What did you mean?"

"She ever tell you what she was looking for in a man?"

He seemed to shrink into himself. "Yeah. Like, the complete opposite of me." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Adventurous, self confident, snappy dresser. I guess I'm adventurous, at least. When I'm not stuffing my craw or zoned out on the couch."

"No, no. I mean besides that."

"Besides that?"

"You know. Didn't she ever talk about how she wanted someone who'd accept her as she was?"

"Yeah, but she was just talking generally, not about boyfriends."

"No, look. There were plenty of times when she'd be frustrated at her lack of progress dating. She'd always be like, 'Why can't they get used to me and move on?' And I'd always tell her that there was one guy who'd already gotten used to her and moved on."

He stared at me, not understanding. "Who's that?"

I groaned. "You, dumbass. I mean, you were right there the whole time, but for so long she was too full of herself to give you a chance. She thought you weren't good enough for her."

"Yeah. I know I wasn't. But I tried. I tried so damn hard."

"Well, you did it eventually."

"Yeah, and look at what kind of reward I got. I just _hate_ the way everything turned out. One week! One _fucking_ week, Amy!" He jumped to his feet. "That's not what was supposed to happen! We should have had everything! A house, a family, stupid arguments about whose turn it was to do the dishes, all of that. And what happens?"

He sat down again, head in his hands. I put an arm over his shoulders, not knowing what else I could do.

He sat there silently for some time. He wasn't even crying or anything, just staring down at the floor.

As I held Fry, I reached up with my other hand and tried to smooth down his hair. One side was flattened back, the other curling down by his ear. His pompadour seemed to be a little flatter today.

He didn't respond, so I just got up and took the plates back to the kitchen.

I have a dishwasher, but I washed them off by hand. I cleaned the griddle manually as well. I think I just needed something to do.

I dried off the spatula with a dishrag as I turned toward the living room, nearly bumping into Fry. He aksed, "Want a hand?"

"No, just finished."

"Okay. I guess I'll go home then."

"You gonna be okay by yourself?"

He smiled sadly. "I'm not gonna be okay either way."

"Well, you can stay here for the night if you want."

"Yeah, maybe. I am pretty tired."

"You should be. I mean, it's... hm."

"What?"

I was looking at my wrist. It showed me two interesting things. "It's 02:13. And I have a message."

"You do? From when?"

I shrugged and hit play.

_Beep_. "Hi, Amy. Dis is Hermes, calling at 23:53 on Wednesday. I'm calling to let you know dat we're having an important all hands meeting tomorrow morning at eight. Dere's some important things to talk about, and we need to have everyone dere. So, I'll see you den." _Beep_.

Fry and I looked at each other.

"You gonna go?"

"I have to."

"Well, let me know how it turns out."

"You're skipping it?"

"Come on, Amy. There's no way I'll be functional tomorrow morning. I mean, I'm about to fall over right now. Speaking of which, can I crash here tonight?"

"Yeah. Of course you can," I answered, surprised that he even felt that he had to aks.

"Thanks." He walked out into the living room and spread out on the couch. When he looked up at me, he noticed my amused smile. "What?"

"I have a bed you can sleep on, you know."

"No, you take it."

I sighed and led him into one of the other bedrooms. As I went to the closet to retrieve the sheets, he stood staring.

"You have a spare bedroom?"

"I have three spare bedrooms."

He helped me deploy the sheets. "Three spare bedrooms? How much does all this cost?"

"Too much. I'm thinking of moving out."

"Why? What do you mean it's too much? Are your parents cutting you off?"

"No. I think they like paying for all my stuff. I want to cut them off, actually. I mean, I'm twenty three. I've got a college degree, and a job, and my own money. I don't want to keep living off my parents."

"Well, at least you have that option."

I looked up at him and saw his head bowed, looking away.

"Sorry," I muttered.

He sat down on the bed and said, "Well, what I mean is, don't turn down chances like that. You're a Wong. Why not take advantage of it?"

I snorted in disgust. "That's the way my mother talks." I put one hand on my hip and pointed the other at him, adopting her accent that made such a mess of the English language: "'You a Wong! You must leeve like Wong!' Fuck. I mean, who cares what I _must_ do. I'll do what I feel like."

"Mm-hmm," he responded. I saw him leaning back on the bed drowsily.

I took that as my cue to leave. "Well, good night."

As he slipped off his shoes, I reached over to the light switch. Before I flipped it, he said, "Amy. Thanks."

I smiled and turned off the light.

* * *

And I still couldn't get to sleep.

And right now, it's 05:48. In a couple of hours I have to leave for that meeting.

I haven't been able to sleep tonight, which gave me an opportunity to write some more in here.

It doesn't make sense. There's so much that's happened these past few days since our Xmas party, and yet I'm still lost as to what to do about Fry. Seeing him at Leela's gravesite, talking to her almost as though he could hear her responding, made me consider if he's still in denial.

But what really shocked me was that he was about to jump into the lake and let himself become a mutant.

Nothing about it adds up.

Was he suicidal? I don't think he was, and besides, suicide booths are much more efficient for that purpose.

Was he envious of the mutant lifestyle? I couldn't see a whole lot to be envious of.

Was he trying to emulate Leela? That's the most likely possibility I can come up with right now.

I feel like I have to watch over him, to make sure that he doesn't try to do anything like that again. But maybe that will just make things worse, because I'll just remind him of her. She always treated his safety as her own responsibility, and for a while he resented that. Although he got used to it in her case, I don't think he'd trust me that much.

And he knows how I feel about him. I was hoping maybe he wouldn't find out until he was ready. But now I've only made things harder for him, and for the moment, I'll have to wait for him to show interest in me first.

And if he never does?

Objectively, I can understand that. But I hope he will.

I thought Fry was handling this so well. On Neptune, or coming back from the resort, or eulogising Leela, I would look at him and be amazed. I knew I couldn't handle it the way he was.

With him around, though, at least I would try.

And tonight – last night, I suppose – I found out that he was faking it. He was hiding his fears. And when they caught up with him, they might have killed him.

I just can't let that happen.

My life kind of feels like the way they always say the Universe will end. All the galaxies drifting further and further apart, and generation after generation of stars dying out until finally the faintest of the M stars drag their nuclear engines to a halt, and the Universe is nothing more than a huge junkyard of discarded stellar husks. Cold. Empty. Meaningless.

That's what my universe feels like.

Except for Fry.

He's the one star that's still burning, still keeping me alive.

I'm not sure that's the right metaphor to use, because that implies that one day, when there's nothing more for him to do, he'll just burn out and fade away. Or go supernova, whatever that would mean.

And I don't know what I'd do if he did burn out.

So that's what I'd tell him, if I could. I'd tell him that I need to keep him safe. That I need someone to keep me safe.

That I need him.


	4. Saturday 07 January 3004: Stun

_My Ship, fourth part: Stun_

by Deb H

* * *

**Saturday 07 January 3004**

Sorry about the dried drool on the corner of this page.

After I finished writing my last entry, I kind of rested my head on the table. I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I can recall after that is Fry pushing me onto the floor.

"Ow! What the... hey."

"Hey. Sorry," he said sheepishly. "I couldn't wake you. You were in pretty deep."

"What time is it?"

"07:50."

"There's a meeting at eight."

"Yeah. We gotta leave, like, now."

He led me out to the tube station.

After we got spit out at 64th, we walked the last couple of blocks to work. I said to him, "Weren't you going to skip this meeting?"

He kind of looked away from me at the ground. "Yeah. I thought maybe I should go. I mean, I was thinking of... of how..."

When he trailed off, I looked up at him. "You're having dreams about her."

He nodded.

I replied, "Me too."

He nodded again.

I pushed the button and stepped aside to let him through the door first.

He had his hands jammed into his pockets, like normal. He was staring at the ground, and I could see tears forming in his eyes.

When I draped an arm over his shoulder, he responded in kind.

We walked through the door together.

* * *

Hermes, Bender, the Professor, Scruffy, and Zoidberg were already there.

Fry aksed me, "Want some coffee?"

I sat next to Bender and called to Fry, "Yeah."

"What flavour?" he aksed from the kitchen.

"We still got mint?"

"Yeah."

"Get me some of that."

"Sure."

Bender turned to me. "You and him are interfacing again? Thought humans had some sort of buffer period after someone you love bites it."

I sighed. "We're not 'interfacing', stupid. And you could always try that thing called _tact_."

"Yeah, well, you deal with a loss your own way, I'll deal with it in mine."

I looked up at him in surprise.

That was sort of what I was expecting him to say, but the way he said it was completely different.

There was no belligerence there at all.

Normally, with respect to Bender, _belligerent_ is one of the top adjectives. Number two, maybe number one. Hell, maybe even number zero.

I thought about what Fry had told me about Bender's feelings, two weeks before.

_Already two weeks?_ I thought. It seemed much more recent, and yet much more distant.

Everything was like that now. That was only seventeen days after... after the day that...

Let me try again.

Seventeen days after Leela's death.

There.

Was that so hard?

Yeah. It was.

Anyway, point is, it was seventeen days. But it felt like seventeen seconds, and like seventeen millennia. All at once.

And I don't think anybody who hasn't been through it can really understand.

Before my mind got too far off course, Fry set down a cup of coffee in front of me.

"Thanks."

Hermes said, "If you folks don't mind, I'd like to call dis meeting to order using an ancient Jamaican bureaucratic technique."

We mumbled noncommittal signals of acceptance.

He picked up a folder from the desk as he stood up. He started to walk around the desk and suddenly swatted Professor Farnsworth on the back of the head with the rolled up folder.

"Dammit, Hermes!" the Professor shouted. "I can't afford another stroke at this juncture!"

He continued around the table and gave the rest of us a good solid _thwack_.

As he sat down again, I cried out, "What the hell kind of tradition is that?"

He answered, "It's a time honoured technique for starting early morning meetings. Now den, de point of dis meeting is to announce de sale of de company."

Fry and I blurted out in synch, "_What?!_"

"Yes," the Professor told us. "I received an offer that I couldn't refuse."

Bender replied, "For what? A new liver? Yeah! That's right!" He offered a hand for high fives. "Anybody? Anyone at all?"

"No, of course not. It's a very generous buyout, plus it comes with three new hips."

Professor Farnsworth owned – _had_ owned – just over half of Planet Express. I had fifteen thousand shares, about seven percent. I got ten thousand in my original benefits package, and Fry and I split Leela's ten thousand.

"What kind of buyout?" I said.

"I'm glad you aksed that, Zoidberg," the Professor said. I rolled my eyes.

He continued, "I'm selling my shares at a very reasonable ten dollars each. Any of you can feel free to sell your shares to the new owners as well."

Scruffy immediately stood up and declared, "Scruffy's quittin'. Sellin' my shares back to the mysterious new owners."

"Have you met them?" Fry aksed him.

"Nope. Don't intend to. Ain't never gonna work for another boss besides Professor Whatshisface there."

As we watched, he placed his mop on the conference table. "Scruffy's gonna miss the quirky camaraderie and irrational zest for living from this group." He walked to the door, but stopped and looked up at the ship. "Need a new challenge in my life, though. Maybe it's back to the Institute for Advanced Studies for Scruffy."

He left, and the Professor continued, "So, how about we meet your new bosses?"

"Are dey here?" Hermes aksed.

"They should be coming in about an hour." The doorbell rang, and the Professor continued, "By which I mean now."

He got up and shuffled out of the room. Over the next couple of minutes the doorbell rang a couple more times.

"How the hell could he sell the entire company?" Fry shouted. "I mean, what's he gonna do the rest of his life?"

Bender slapped him. "Quit thinking about yourself all the time, organism! What am _I_ gonna do the rest of my simulated life?"

"Wonder who they are," I said.

"Bet they're your parents," Bender answered.

I shook my head. "They would have told me."

"Maybe it's a surprise."

I looked up and started to reconsider.

Maybe. It still didn't sound like the sort of thing my parents would do.

Bender continued, "Maybe they bought the company and rehired Brannigan hoping that the two of you could make some human grandkids."

_That_ sounded like the sort of thing my parents would do.

I looked over at Fry. He was just staring straight ahead. It seemed like he hadn't heard a word anybody said.

"Fry," I said to him.

He turned to me.

"Whatcha thinking?"

He shrugged.

"Hey, Amy!" BW shouted.

I turned away from Fry and answered, "Hi, BW."

BW was just walking into the room behind two others. There was a short human guy, shorter even than me. There was someone from a species that I didn't recognise. She – it later turned out she was female, but I couldn't tell from looking at her – was a dark blue and was sort of a snake with a humanoid upper body. Four tentacles, two on each side, stuck out from the torso, and her head was a little bit elongated with short hair of a lighter blue shade curling down around small knobs that protruded from the sides of her head. Based upon their location, they were ears. But based upon their shape, they were more like noses.

BW walked up and gave me a hug. "Bet you didn't think you'd see me again so soon, didja?"

I ruffled its hair and jokingly said to it, "Just as long as you're not my new boss."

"No chance of that. I'm bottom of the pecking order with these guys." It pointed at its coworkers. The short guy was being introduced to Zoidberg and Bender, and the other one was stamping forms with Hermes.

BW and Fry shook hands next. They had to remind one another of their names, and when Fry said his name, BW replied, "Yeah, I knew it was some sort of method of cooking. 'Charbroil' didn't sound right."

I introduced BW to my other coworkers. It introduced me to its boss, Clyde Villafuerte, and their bureaucrat, Hlachotoplo. "Call me Choto," she said in a distantly lyrical accent that made letters weaker. For instance, she made her name sound more like _Shodo_.

"We'll have a real meeting at nine," Clyde said. "Until then, let's just hang out for a while, try and get to know each other."

I led BW down to the hangar floor. Fry and Bender tagged along.

Looking up at the _Leela_, BW aksed, "What about your captain? Do I get to meet her?"

Fry and Bender stared at me.

Fry said to me, "You haven't told it?"

"Told me what?" BW responded.

It was looking back and forth between Fry and me. It stammered, "Was... was she fired or something?"

Fry stared blankly at the steps and said, "Leela died two weeks ago."

BW turned to me, wide eyed.

I nodded.

It murmured, "I'm... I'm sorry."

I shrugged. "I never got a chance to tell you."

"How old was she?"

"Twenty eight."

BW shook its head. "Just isn't fair, is it?"

We stood there for a little while, nobody saying anything. After a couple of minutes, I noticed that Bender was gone. He'd gone upstairs, and I could see him talking to Choto.

Fry and I ended up spending the rest of the hour taking BW on a tour of the _Turanga Leela_. I think BW really only got a sense of what Leela meant to us when we told it the name of the ship.

We showed BW my quarters and then Fry's. Bender's hammock was still strung across the upper part of the room, but I managed to smile a little as I looked down at the mattress Fry had put in a couple of months ago. I wondered what would have motivated him to redecorate like that.

BW suddenly said, "Do I get a cabin?"

Fry looked down the hallway. "We have a couple of extra rooms back aft. You could have one of them."

"Or you could bunk with me," I said.

BW turned to me. "Really? You wouldn't mind?"

"It'll be fun. We just gotta get you a hammock."

"I still got my old one," Fry put in.

We left it on the floor of my quarters so we could get to the meeting in time.

I wasn't sure where the extra chairs had come from, but we all managed to sit around the conference table. Save for Choto, that is. It looked to me like she wasn't capable of sitting in the first place.

Professor Farnsworth said to us, "Well, everyone, I've thoroughly enjoyed bossing you all around for all these years. Those of you who are still alive, at least."

"You suck!" Bender shouted. "Give us the new management!"

"Yes, yes," the Professor responded. "As I'm sure you're all eager to meet your new boss –"

"Already did!" Fry called out.

For some reason I found the heckling funny. I always did like that about Fry and Bender, how they could deflate an important or tense situation with just a few words.

"– I'll just hand it over to him after a long winded speech about why I sold the company in the first place."

"Nobody cares!" Bender shouted.

"I do!" Zoidberg shouted back.

BW leaned over to me and whispered, "Are they always like that?"

I whispered back, "No."

"Thank god."

"Usually they're funnier."

It groaned.

Adjusting his glasses, the Professor resumed, "Now, Planet Express was founded upon the twin values of generating lots of money for my research into practical applications of doomsday devices, and... whatever the second value was."

"Getting lazy robots drunk!" Fry shouted.

"Yeah! That's what I'm talking about!" Bender replied.

"Yes, of course," the Professor said. "And for many years, that's exactly what we did. Along with damaging numerous packages, slightly less numerous spaceships, and about as numerous crewmembers."

Bender called, "Especially Leela!" before Fry punched him.

When Bender got up, he said, "Hey, man. Calm down. She was already damaged. Am I right? Am I – _ow!_ Ow! Ow! My forearm and forehead!"

Fry had detached Bender's arm and was beating him with it.

I stared at this in growing concern.

What Bender said had infuriated me as well. But even so, I thought Fry was overreacting. Bender wasn't intentionally disrespecting Leela. That sort of thing was normal for robots.

The rest of us were watching helplessly, except for the Professor, who continued to drone on oblivious to the other happenings in the room.

Finally I got up and grabbed Fry from behind. He tried to wrest out of my arms, but finally he relented. I pried Bender's arm from his hand.

I said, softly, "Bender, you know better than to get Fry riled up like that."

He said, "Yeah, but how am I supposed to provide the lovable and edgy witticisms around here?"

I gave his arm back, and he muttered under his breath as he went back to the conference table.

Fry and I were now standing by the stairs down to the hangar floor.

I held his hands. He was still breathing heavily. His arms were still shaking.

"It's okay, Fry."

I was looking into his eyes, but he seemed to be staring through me.

He shook his head slowly, side to side. "It's not okay."

I held him tight. I couldn't think of anything else to do other than whisper in his ear, "It's okay."

He sniffled, "It's not okay."

I ran my hands down his arms, trying to relax them. They were so extremely tense.

He said, weakly, "Nothing's okay, Amy. Nothing will ever be okay again."

I just didn't have any clue what to do next.

The meeting was still going on, sort of. I could hear the Professor still talking, the way I can hear the traffic from the balcony of my apartment. Distant, indistinct.

Should we have gone right back to our seats?

I aksed myself that question, but when I looked up into Fry's eyes, he seemed to have zoned out. His eyes looked down, and in other circumstances I would have accused him of staring at my breasts.

It's funny, but I think that if I'd ever caught Fry doing that, which I never did, I wouldn't have been mad. I would have just called him out. I would have said, "Fry, you're staring at my boobs." And he would have been all flustered and embarrassed and apologetic, and I would have laughed and said it was okay, and then he would have insisted on making it up to me by buying me a drink at a bar.

On a couple of occasions, I caught guys staring at my breasts. I stared them down each time, and each time they immediately disappeared into the crowd. I hated being reduced, whether it was to "the Wong heiress" or to my body. Anybody who ogled me, I assumed that they had no interest in me personally.

But, well, Fry cared about me. He always had, even before we dated. And then having to ride around on my body for a few days brought us closer, even as we broke up. Fry liked me, not just because of my body.

And that's exactly my problem. He _likes_ me. He _loves_ me not.

* * *

I finally decided to lead him onto the ship and into my quarters. We sat together on the bed, and I took his hands.

"How are you, Fry?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I mean, every time I feel like I'm past it and I can start to live normally again, something else happens. Like when Bender said that. I mean, Bender says things like that all the time. We expect it out of him. But when I heard it, I just snapped."

He paused for a moment, and then he went on. "Bender didn't deserve that. Why'd I do that? I'm a fucking monster. I should just..."

He held his head in his hands, clearly shamed.

"Fry, look," I began, haltingly. "Everyone's been like that. It's hard for all of us."

"Even you?"

That caught me off guard. It was then that I realised that Fry had absolutely no idea what I was going through.

And then I thought, _Do I have any idea what _he_'s going through?_

Nonetheless, I tried to think of a way to explain my situation to him.

Finally I just said, "I pulled the trigger."

My voice was little more than a whisper.

He aksed me, "What did you say?"

I jumped up and cried, "I pulled the fucking trigger, okay? I had it pointed at the guy. My hand was moving like crazy. I thought I could get him! I thought I could save her!"

I put my hands to my face as I sank to my knees. I could feel Fry's arms wrapping me up from behind as I sobbed, an emotional rocket wreck.

Not that Fry was in much better shape, of course. He already knew this story, and I don't think he needed to hear it again.

He whispered in my ear, "It's not your fault."

"It _is_ my fault," I responded. "Why did it have to be her? Couldn't it have been me?"

Fry lifted my chin up and pulled my hands away. He was sitting in front of me on the floor.

He was staring at me, his face showing utter disbelief.

He started to talk. "Y... y... you d... you don't mean that."

"Of course I mean that. Come on, Fry. Wouldn't you have chosen Leela over me?"

"Stop it, Amy," he said.

"Of course you would. So would I, Fry. She's so much more important than me."

"Stop it, Amy," he repeated, more forcefully. "I can't let you do that to yourself. It's already happened. It's behind us. There's nothing more we can do."

I looked down at my hands. "Yeah... but..."

"Look, the only thing we can do is move on, and maybe try to make her proud of us."

I nodded. Then I thought about something.

"Fry."

"Yeah?"

"Does anybody else know?"

"Know what?"

"You know. What really happened."

"I haven't told anyone. Have you?"

I shook my head.

He said, "Then it's between you and me and her."

As we held one another in a tearful embrace on the floor of my quarters, I thought, _I don't deserve a friend like him_.

* * *

We got back to the meeting with the Professor still talking. I suspect he didn't even notice our absence.

Fry and I settled back into our chairs, and he rested a hand atop mine.

Bender leaned over to Fry. "Listen, buddy. That... you know, it didn't come out the way I meant."

"I know," Fry answered. "It's okay."

"Yeah. It's just, well, I don't want you to think I don't care. I mean, I miss old One-Eye as much as you do."

Fry gave a teasing shove. "You can't _possibly_ miss her as much as I do."

Bender replied, "Yeah, you're right. I'm not programmed to miss anyone that much."

As they slapped hands, I turned back to the Professor.

"...But as it turned out, 2999 was an even better year for our company. We finally got rid of that loser crew, the lighter fluid incident notwithstanding. We hired a new intern, someone with knowledge and naïveté and that most important trait, functional organs. She quickly proved capable at many tasks around the office, although there was one job she would not do."

Fry turned to me in disgust and whispered, "He didn't..."

I told him, "No, he just aksed me to chew his food for him."

"Oh. Still, that's pretty nasty."

Bender leaned over to us. "Anybody got an idea how to make this old crank think he's done talking?"

Fry and I puzzled over that challenge for a moment.

I said, "We could start clapping."

The two of them looked back at each other. Fry gave an _Eeh, what the hell_ shrug.

Fry started to clap, and Bender and I joined in. The rest of the table stared at us.

BW was about to start but hesitated. After an encouraging nod from me, it began to clap with us.

About then, the rest of them got the message. The Professor trailed off, and Choto pushed Clyde to his feet.

Clyde said, "Oh... um... thank you, Professor Farnsworth."

They shook hands, and the Professor sat down again, seemingly unfazed.

Clyde addressed us. "I'm Clyde Villafuerte, and I'm going to be the most dynamic boss any of you have ever had."

At that moment, the Professor began snoring.

Clyde went on, but cast nervous glances back at the sleeping Professor every once in a while. "Um... let me tell you a little bit about my background first. I come from a silicon mining family in Spain and inherited majority control of the company. But recently I decided I needed a change, so I sold all my shares and started looking for other things to do. I've known Professor Farnsworth for years now. We've met at several trade shows and industry conferences.

"And I'm excited to have this opportunity now. I've been eager to get into the shipping industry for some time now, and now that I have the opportunity, I'm going to do everything I can to take Planet Express to the next level."

I leaned over to Fry. "Haven't we heard this speech before?"

He replied, "If he uses the word _leverage_, I'm going to lose it."

Bender leaned in. "If he uses the word _antipode_, I'm going to lose it."

We looked back at Bender in confusion.

He said, defensively, "Hey, you try using _antipode_ in everyday speech. It's not easy."

With no way to respond to that, Fry and I turned back to Clyde.

He was staring us down. "Are you three quite finished?"

I looked at the table and muttered, "Sorry."

Fry jumped to his feet. "No, wait," he said authoritatively. "Let me aks you something. Can you fly that ship?"

Clyde raised an eyebrow at Fry. "Who are you again?"

"Can you fly that ship?" Fry repeated.

Clyde looked quite disgusted at this turn of events. "No, I can't."

"Do you have anyone who can?"

He turned to Choto and BW. Choto was nonplussed, but BW seemed to be a little bit amused.

Clyde huffed, "I suppose not."

Fry pointed to the ship. "Well, there's only one _Turanga Leela_, and there's only one person who can fly her. Only one person who can fix her. And that's Amy. So I'd like to see a little more respect for her. Because Bender and I are with her all the way. Just think of us as a three member union. If you think you can run this company without us, well, I invite you to try."

We were all staring at Fry, and I'm sure everyone was thinking something similar to what I was: _What the hell?_

I turned anxiously to Clyde.

He was looking askance at Fry. Then, all of a sudden, he broke into a lopsided grin.

"I'm going to like it around here, aren't I?"

Then Bender spoke up. "Hey, are you going to be done soon? _All My Circuits_ is on."

Clyde said, "Isn't it a rerun today?"

Bender narrowed his eyes. "Touché, Mr Villafuerte."

"Anyway, I was gonna say, I'm going to try not to change anything around here. You guys can continue doing your jobs as you see fit, and we'll only be providing occasional oversight.

"Hlachotoplo will be working for me. Hermes will still be directing day to day activities as usual. And Bethany Weir here – BW – will be around to assist in the deliveries, the maintenance, and all the other important tasks."

"Can you cook?" Fry aksed BW.

"Not really," it said. "Why?"

"Not really? So you're better than Bender."

"Any more questions?" Clyde said.

Zoidberg aksed, "What about the Professor?"

"Oh, yes. He's going to stay on as a consultant."

"Yes, that's right," the Professor added. "I'm going to continue to work on these useless devices that none of you care about, until, of course, I need you as beta testers for the wave of world domination that I'm going to use them for. Oh my, yes."

Hermes aksed, "What about Cubert, mon?"

"Well, Cubert is working on a doomsday device of his very own," the Professor told us. "Perhaps he too will know the feeling of having an entire planet humbled at his feet, all of them just waiting for their orders to come down and hoping that they won't be told to fight a deathmatch against their best friend or their neighbour or their English teacher from high school..."

As the Professor walked off into his lab, his voice faded away but still continued carrying on.

From inside the lab, I could hear Cubert's voice. "I can only hope that when I reach your age, all of my ramblings are about things that actually happened."

* * *

The rest of the day was devoted to getting to know our new owners.

Clyde took us out to lunch at a Spanish restaurant. As flamenco dancers whirled past our table every couple of minutes, he, Choto, and BW shared more of their life stories.

Actually, Clyde didn't tell us very much beyond what he'd already said. We heard Choto's and BW's life stories mostly.

Choto came from a planet called Mouscron, only a couple of kiloparsecs from the centre of the Milky Way. She was fifty eight years old, but she said that would be the Mouscronian equivalent of about thirty. Her species took longer to reach physiological and psychological maturity.

"I went through a bachelor programme in computer science at Mouscron State," she told us, "and then I went to NJIT for my Master's. I'm actually only the second Mouscronian to settle on Earth. That shows you how remote our planet is. I started in the CS department, but when I met some of the bureaucrats, I realised how much more exciting bureaucracy was."

I noticed Hermes smiling quietly to himself. This was probably the only other person in the Universe who would use the words _exciting_ and _bureaucracy_ consecutively.

Choto continued, "Well, when I transferred into the programme, naturally I had so much catching up to do. I'd aks questions like 'Where would you itemise a solitary deduction of a grass stain?' and everyone would go 'Duh! On an A434-9-05C!' or whatever."

"Dat's an ice cream stain!" Hermes protested. "A grass stain is a 62-418RF!"

"_Anyway_, eventually I started programming all the forms I ran into on my computer." She held up a small rectangular panel that she had on a cord around her neck. "That's when I realised that nobody had ever come up with a form to report incidents of accidental public nudity that weren't covered by reality show cameras or surveillance cameras. That ended up being my PhD thesis."

Hermes aksed her, "Is dat de W555-1212?"

"Yep."

"I got me first one of those a few months ago. Amy got her bra caught in de trash decomposer out back."

I leaned forward and tried not to think about that day. I mean, it was hot. I'd taken off the top to my sweatsuit. I just stood too close to the intake port. It could have happened to anyone.

Hermes said, "So dat was your form?"

"Yeah."

"Good work."

"Thanks."

Then I finally noticed the badge that Choto had pinned to her shirt.

She was a grade 31. Four grades higher than Hermes.

That's when I finally realised why they were making such a fuss about not replacing anybody. Hermes must have seen that grade 31 badge as soon as they entered and immediately assumed that his job was on the line, if not taken from him already.

Yeah, yeah. Go ahead and tell me how dumb I am.

* * *

At the end of the day, after Fry, Bender, and I had given BW a full afternoon's crash course in the ship's innards, our new coworkers all left together. They were sharing a hotel suite until they found places to live. BW was probably going to get its own apartment, and I wondered whether Clyde and Choto would be sharing one.

They hadn't told us much about their personal lives. Choto had said a little bit about her career, but I still don't know how they met one another, or what exactly she did for Clyde, or anything. For all I know, they could be married.

Anyway, after they left, Hermes called me into his office. As I entered, he said, "So BW knows everything dere is to know about de _Leela_ now, right?"

Suppressing a laugh, I told him, "Yeah, she's sharp. She graduated with honours in physics."

"Yeah. When did she become... um..."

"Androgynous?"

"Is dat what it is?"

"That's what she... _it_ says. It must have been sometime this year."

He nodded. He had his eyes on a pen in his hand, which he was tapping on the edge of the desk.

At length, he put the pen down and met my eyes.

"How are you, Amy?"

I fixed my eyes on the desk as I reclined into the couch. "Okay, I guess."

"What about Fry?"

"Fry?" I turned to the door, as if there was some way he could hear us. "He's doing pretty well, actually. I mean, considering."

"Are you sure?" Hermes replied.

I turned back to him and said, "What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean... dis morning..."

"Come on, Hermes. After Bender said that? What did you expect Fry to do?"

"Even so, we can't have fights breaking out in de office every day."

I raised my eyebrows at him. "Is that what this is about? Productivity?"

"No, Amy. It's just –"

"Hold it, Hermes. Let me aks you something. How many deliveries did Fry make on Xmas Day?"

He looked away. He knew I got him.

"Well, Bender was dere too..."

"Didn't you give him two hundred eighteen deliveries to make? In one day?"

"Well, it was two and a half days, really..."

"Yeah! What the hell! I mean, you know how far away those packages go! I can't even believe he did it all in just two days! I hope you at least filled up the coffee supplies in the galley! God! Did you know that Fry had to leave Bender at the wheel half the time? Does Bender even have a pilot's license?"

"Well, not quite..."

"Hermes, just think for a second! Just think about what it's been like for him! I mean, you remember how many times he nearly got himself killed when Leela was in trouble! Just think about when he finally kissed her for real... or when he finally fucked her. Think about when he came back from that one delivery and found her body in my arms."

I had risen to my feet when I started shouting at Hermes. I'd been pacing back and forth in front of his desk, but then I came to a halt as my voice trailed off, my emotions starting to get the better of me.

I stood in the doorway and said to Hermes, "I mean, don't tell me you worked a sixteen hour day right after Dawn died."

As the door slid shut behind me, I thought I heard Hermes reply, "I did."

I had to have imagined it.

* * *

Not finding Fry or Bender anywhere, I walked down to the floor of the hangar. The _Turanga Leela_ seemed a bit dirty, so I went to the closet and grabbed all the cleaning equipment. I'd scrubbed down the tail fins and the rear landing legs when I heard Bender shouting, "Hey, know what time it is?"

I turned to him, and he continued, "Time to get hammered!"

I put down the squeegee and headed up to meet them. Bender had a case of beer, and Fry was carrying a pineapple with a handle. It was the pineapple fried rice from E's, a takeout restaurant that we'd often go to.

"Hey guys," I said as I slipped the top of my sweat suit back on.

"What up," Fry said.

Bender aksed me, "Want to watch the celebrity ape fights tonight?"

"Not really."

Said Bender, "Come on! Don't you want to see Elzar in an ape suit against that guy from _Queer Cape for the Straight Ape_?"

Fry told him, "Nah, I think Amy and I will just hang out."

He reached for the beer case, but Bender yanked it away and shouted, "Hey, get your own, fleshwad!"

Fry protested, "I did! I paid for that case!"

"You did not, jerk! I did!"

"Yeah, with money you stole from me!"

"For your information, I stole it from Hermes!"

"You did?"

"Yeah. It came out of my wages from this month. And considering the amount of work I've done this month, that's basically stealing! Ha ha ha ha ha! Naw, I'm just being difficult. Here you go."

He handed Fry a couple of bottles and carried the rest of the case into the lounge.

Fry turned to me. "Get the plates?"

"Sure." I grabbed a pair of plates and forks, plus a bottle of iced tea for myself, and followed Fry upstairs.

There's a big circular room located at the top of the tower in the building – I like to call it the rotunda. There are a couple of doors that open out to the balcony that surrounds the room. The high ceiling makes it the best place for the Xmas tree that we install every year.

When we came up, Fry punched the button next to the fireplace. With a _fwoom_, it ignited and gave us some flickering yellow illumination.

Fry removed the top of the pineapple and emptied some of the rice onto his plate. I took the pineapple and poured out some more rice. We ate in silence for a couple of minutes.

Then he looked up from his plate and said to me, "You like the new owners?"

"I don't know. Clyde didn't tell us a whole lot about himself."

"Yeah he did. He told us all about how he used to own his family's mining company. Remember?"

"I know. But why did he sell his company? Why did he just suddenly decide to buy a package delivery company?"

Fry replied, "Well, why did I come to the future?"

That puzzled me. "Didn't you get here by accident?"

"Yeah. Maybe his situation's the same."

"Like how?"

"I don't know! Some traumatic accident with mining machinery? It could be anything."

"What did you say?"

"I said I don't know what it is."

"No, what did you say about accidents with machinery?"

"I don't know. It was just a guess."

"Yeah, but... what do you know about..."

He was looking at me funny. "I don't know anything about him. Why? Do you?"

"No, not about him... but..."

Fry didn't seem to get it. For a second I was wondering why he would mention an accident with heavy machinery. Did he know about my uncle? If he did, how could he have found out?

But I studied his face, and I finally convinced myself that he couldn't understand my reaction because he really didn't know what happened.

Finally I said, "What do you think of them?"

"They're okay, I guess. It's just..."

"What?"

He went on, "It's just... well... I think maybe it's just too much change too fast, you know? This whole month has been... well, first I started waking up to find this... this beautiful... _siren_ in bed with me.

"Then all of a sudden I start waking up, and what's next to me in the bed? Just... well... just _cold_. That's it. Cold emptiness.

"Then for a while I was actually waking up _in_ cold. And then... well... this week I don't think I ever fell asleep. I think I've just been half asleep this whole week."

There was another quiet interval.

I broke it by saying, "You've had dreams about her?"

"Yeah."

"Like what?"

"Well, they're kind of like what would be happening if... you know, if she was still around."

"Yeah? What happens?"

"Well, in one... well, she proposes to me."

I smiled in amusement. "Really?"

"Yeah. See, in that dream, you'd fallen down the stairs when that guy was chasing her. You got knocked out for a bit, and then after you came to, she and I were talking. And then she finally said it. She finally told me she loved me. And I was so stunned, I almost didn't catch what she said next. She said, 'Will you marry me?'

"And I was in such disbelief. Really, all I could do was reach into my pocket and show her this."

He reached into the pocket on the right side of his jacket and took out a small black box.

He went on, "And when I showed it to her, you know what I said?"

I answered for him. "'I wanted to surprise you. You beat me to it.'"

He gave a small laugh. "Yeah. Was it that predictable?"

I reached for the box. "Let me see that."

When I pulled it from his hands and hinged open the box, I could only think, _What the fuck?_

I must have stared at that damn ring for hours.

Finally I looked up at Fry and said, "That's the same."

"What is?"

"That dream, Fry," I said in a hushed, shocked tone. "I had the same exact dream."

"You did?"

"Yeah. _Exactly_ the same. I woke up in the medbay, and then after Leela came in, she was talking to you, and then she just proposed to you, out of the blue. You gave her this ring, this same ring, and then she kissed you."

"Wait. She kissed me?"

"Yeah. She didn't in yours?"

"I must have woken up right before that. I _always_ miss the best part of my dreams. It sucks."

We turned back to our plates, and Fry aksed me, "So did you have any ads?"

"No. You know, I haven't had any ads in my dreams since then."

He said, "Yeah. Neither have I."

The ring was still in my hand. I examined it more closely, paying special attention to that mesmerising diamond at the top. More than a centimetre across, it looked like it would make the ring tip over and settle in the stable equilibrium, with the diamond under the finger. Around the ring's circumference, I could see seven purple gemstones evenly spaced. They were cut into smooth circles.

I aksed Fry, "Are they synthetic?"

"The stones?"

"Yeah."

"Yep," he replied.

These days it's easy to make gems from scratch. Especially diamonds, which are just carbon anyway. Silver is still a little expensive, though.

My next question was, "Did the Professor make it for you?"

"Cubert, actually."

"Really? Cubert?"

"Yeah," he told me. "I was gonna ask the Professor, but he wasn't there and Cubert was. So, you know."

"So you aksed him, and he just said okay?"

"Yeah. He was like, 'Why should I care about your love life?' So I said, 'I'll give you some porno mags,' and he was like, 'Done.'"

I giggled, "Fry! You're corrupting a fourteen year old!"

"Well, I was fourteen when my brother got me my first porno magazine. And I turned out fine."

"That's debatable," I said.

He shoved my arm, but he was smiling. He and I teased one another a lot, and that was something I really liked about him. Likewise with Leela. I thought of her as the big sister that I never had. Before long I found out that she had a corresponding feeling about me, and that's when we really became close.

As close as you can be to someone who's never shared your body, at least.

I mean, I talked with her about everything. But that's about all that we would do. I felt inadequate every time we went to the gym, or played pool, or went bowling. She was better than me in just about any sport. And at the same time, she felt inadequate when we went to bars and clubs, when all the guys would be hitting on me and staring – or trying to avoid staring – at her.

When you came right down to it, we couldn't identify with one another that much, except that we both felt out of place.

Fry and I, though, had much more in common. Quite frankly, adulthood had snuck up on both of us. We'd talked about his previous life a thousand years ago. He didn't know what to do with his life, even after he reached college age. Similarly with me. I chose to major in space systems engineering just because I took a class in it my freshperson year and thought the engines were really neat. And I basically tripped over Professor Farnsworth's ad for an internship.

I wonder if there's really such a thing as fate. I don't think I'd be happy anywhere other than Planet Express. Fry could only have been happy in our time, and through the most incredibly unlikely turn of events, he got here. And on the way he met Bender, who, I don't think, would have opened up to anyone else. And Leela, of course, seemed born to be a starship captain, a post she probably would never have gotten if that redheaded guy hadn't come tumbling out of that cryogenic tank four years ago.

And when Fry and Leela fell in love, it just seemed like the script had been written long ago.

Then, everything went supernova.

If it had been scripted, one would have to throw the script aside and say _How could that happen?_

There just didn't seem to be any way that this result could be preordained. What could be the point? To teach Fry that life blows? He learned that back in the twentieth century, I'd think. To teach him that life still blows in the thirty first century, perhaps.

Maybe to teach _me_ that life blows.

I snapped the box shut and turned back to the fireplace.

After a bit, Fry said, "So does that happen a lot in the future?"

"What?"

"People having the same dreams?"

"No."

"So it's like it was in my time."

"What's that?" I aksed.

"It's some fucked up shit."

I looked down at my hand, where I still held the ring box that I'd already seen.

I whispered, "Got that right."

* * *

We ended up joining Bender to watch the celebrity ape fights anyway. At some point that night, Hermes walked into the lounge.

"What are de three of ya still doing here? Haven't ya heard of time off?"

Sitting on the floor in front of Bender and me on the couch, Fry said to Hermes, "Haven't you?"

"Ooooh! Taken down!" Bender shouted, pointing at Hermes.

Hermes groaned and said to us, "Anyway, it's a good thing I caught ya before ya left. Dere's something I've got to tell all of ya."

"Ooh! Ooh! I know!" Bender yelled. "We're firing Fry and replacing him with the genderless meatsack!"

"No," Hermes answered. "We're giving everyone four days off."

"Really?" I aksed.

"Yeah. So get outta here and don't come back until Tuesday."

"You mean Thursday."

"No, Tuesday," he said. "Ya get tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off."

I protested, "We already had Saturday and Sunday off, Hermes! It's called the weekend!"

"Aren't tomorrow and Monday planetary holidays anyway?" Bender added.

"Well, since when does Hermes care about that?" Fry said.

"Yeah, he's such a hardass," Bender replied.

Hermes waved at us and said, "Hey, I'm still here."

Dismissively, Bender said to him, "Get outta here. Don't come back till Tuesday."

Hermes stood displeased for a moment until he turned around and headed out the door. "See ya guys next year."

I looked up and said, "See you, Hermes."

After he left, Fry turned to the door and aksed, "You think maybe we were too hard on him?"

Bender laughed raucously for some time. "Ohhh, man! Too hard on Hermes! What will you come up with next, you crazy life form?"

Fry glared at Bender over his shoulder.

In response, Bender said, "Come on, jerk. The jerk keeps jerking us around like a bunch of jerks who can't help being jerked by another jerk who jerks jerks around the same way he jerks jerk chocolate."

"What?" I aksed, understandably.

Bender said, "What? Haven't you tried his Jamaican jerk chocolate?"

I shook my head. "Is it any good?"

"The hell would I know, moron? I can't taste."

We continued to watch. A few minutes later, Fry suddenly said, "You know what I always wondered? How come we count to ten?"

I replied, "What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean, we only have eight fingers. Why do we count to ten? Why not just eight?"

I looked down at him. He was still facing the television set.

I said to him, "Yeah, but there's no reason it should correspond to however many fingers we have. I mean, didn't the Sumerians have a base sixty system?"

"I don't know. You'd probably know more about that than I would."

"So, yeah. It's probably something like that, some old culture using base ten and now everyone does."

He looked up at me and shrugged. "Just seems odd, you know. I mean, how does everyone start to count? On their fingers. We even _call_ them digits. So why wouldn't we have the same number of digits in math as we do on our hands?"

"Hm. Yeah, you're right. Why would they be called digits if they don't have anything to do with our fingers?"

"Yeah. Well, I always thought it was funny," he said.

* * *

We kept on watching all the way until 23:00, by which time the local news came on.

Bender switched off the TV, stood up, and said, "Well, now that we got some time off, anybody want to go get hammered again?"

Fry said, "Umm... not really. I just kinda wanted to turn in, you know."

"What? Come on! We got, like, the rest of the year off! Don't you wanna party?"

"Well, kinda. Not now, though."

"Aw, okay." Bender trudged toward the door, and Fry got up off the floor to follow him.

I said, "Hang on, guys."

Fry looked back at me.

"Do... umm... do you guys..."

For some reason, it took me a while to say what I was trying to say.

Fry sat on the arm of the couch and rested his hand on my shoulder.

I tried again. "You guys wanna, you know, come stay with me for a while?"

"Really? Stay with you?" Fry aksed.

"Yeah. I just think it might be good for all of us."

Fry turned to Bender. "What about you? You want to stay at Amy's place for a while?"

Bender answered, "Hmmmm..."

I warned him, "Just so you know, if I catch you stealing my shit, I'm bolting you down inside one of the engine nozzles."

He played innocent. "Hey, come on! What do I look like, some sort of kleptobot?"

"Yeah," Fry and I responded simultaneously.

Fry added, "Bender, look. You're my best friend, but if you try to pull anything stupid now, I'll never forgive you."

And you can say what you want about Bender – I've said plenty myself – but he seemed hurt by that. "You really don't think you can trust me?"

"Well, you did nearly sell my body on eBay."

"Hey, I didn't try to deceive anyone! I put right on there: _Vintage 1974 model, needs some repair work, good handyman project_. And it's not like you needed your body. You seemed to be having plenty of fun on Amy's body, if you don't mind my saying it."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't remind me," Fry said.

When he was riding my body, Fry did seem to be a little eager to examine the peculiarities of the female anatomy, shall we say. And Bender, of course, happened to overhear when I was talking about that with Leela.

Bender turned to me. "Anyway, I'd love to stay with you guys, if you'll have me."

"Of course, Bender. I've got this one really tiny closet. You'll love it."

We went back to their apartment and got some of Fry's clothes. When we got to my place, I led Bender to his closet, and he went to bed right away.

I aksed Fry, "What do you want to do tomorrow?"

"Is 'sleep all day' an option?"

"Yeah, I might choose that option myself. I'm _really_ tired."

He said, "Well, if I'm not awake by, like, dinnertime tomorrow, come in and start poking me."

"Sure. Oh..."

He'd started to turn away, but he stopped.

I continued, "I was gonna aks you something."

"Yeah?"

"About that ring."

He pulled it out of his pocket again, flipping open the box and looking longingly down at it.

Every time I got a look at that thing, I was transfixed. I'd like to think I'm not shallow enough to be won over by dazzling jewelry, but I am.

He sniffled, "Just wish I could have gotten some use out of it."

I said, "So when did Cubert make it?"

"Last Friday."

"_Last_ Friday?" I aksed. Last Friday was the 22nd. We were on Neptune then.

"No, not last Friday. Two weeks... no, three weeks ago. You know, the Friday before..."

"Oh. Three weeks ago."

"I know."

Fry and I were conversing with more than just words. That last exchange was the equivalent of _You know, the Friday before Leela's death. Oh. That was already three weeks ago? It doesn't feel like it was that long ago; it feels like it was just yesterday. I know, I can remember it just like it was yesterday too. You think we'll ever be able to put it behind us?_

I aksed, "So how come you didn't actually do it?"

"Do what?"

I lowered my eyes to the ring again, giving the barest nod toward it.

He looked down at it and showed a slight shrug. "I dunno. I think I was saving it for when she finally said she loved me. Then I could say something like, 'And I love you. I always have. And... I've been waiting for the day when you felt the same way about me. I mean... I know you've had things rough. You haven't always had someone there for you.

"'And, well, ever since I got to the future, I've been trying to be that someone for you. It hasn't always been easy, and I know there are times you've wanted to kick me in the _cojones_. And it's not like I wouldn't have deserved it. Actually, all I can do is say thanks, for not actually going through with it.

"'But, well, hearing you say that... it makes me feel like it was all worth it. It just seems like everything from here... it seems like it'll all be easy now. Well, I mean, not _easy_. Somehow it... it doesn't seem like _anything_ will ever come easy between you and me, Leela. But I want to be the someone who's there for you when it's not easy.

"'And I hope you'll want to be the someone who's there for me. I hope you... well, I hope you'll wear this ring with pride, and love, and happiness, because that's what you deserve. I hope that when I'm not around, you can look at this ring and know that I'm always thinking of you. And I hope that you'll feel proud, maybe even honoured, to be my bride.

"'Leela... will you marry me?'"

My eyes had misted up right around _I've been waiting for the day when you felt the same way about me_.

And you know what pisses me off?

A couple of times in there, he said Leela's name. And dammit, I actually sensed some part of me getting angry that it wasn't my name he was saying. It makes me sound like such a vengeful bitch, but that's how I felt.

Maybe LaBarbara was right. Maybe I do want Fry all to myself.

A minute or two went by before he said, "Or something. I hadn't given it much thought."

I afforded myself a very slight smile. "That's bullshit, Fry. You were rehearsing that for days, weren't you?"

"Yeah." He smiled a little bit too.

"Well, that was..." I shook my head. "You would have had her speechless."

He nodded. At length he shut the box and slipped it back into his jacket.

"Well, it was the truth," he said. "I said I'd always think of her when we were apart. Well, we couldn't be more apart right now. And I couldn't be thinking of her more."

I placed my hand on his shoulder. He looked over at it, and then he reached up and placed his own hand on top of mine.

After another pause, I told him, "I guess I'm gonna go to bed now."

"Okay. Good night."

"Night, Fry."

* * *

With the door open, I could see him curled up in bed. He left the blinds open, and the artificial light coming in from the city cast a dim yellowish trapezoid across the bed. He was facing away from me, one arm reaching around his pillow.

I heard a voice whispering, "He looks so cute like that, doesn't he?"

I hadn't seen her there in the shadows, but Leela was sitting on the opposite side of the bed, looking over her shoulder at him.

She got up and came to me in the doorway. "Go for a walk?"

"Sure."

She led me out to the street, where we started to walk toward the Planet Express building.

"So you saw this?" She was holding out the ring box with Fry's intended engagement ring.

"Yeah. It's, well, it's breathtaking."

"Well, you'd know better than me. My breath's been taken already."

"Yeah. Guess it has."

"Bet that surprised you, didn't it?"

"What did?"

"Seeing this ring again."

"Yeah. I mean, how could Fry and I have the same dream? It doesn't make sense."

"They broadcast ads into dreams."

"Well, yeah, but this wasn't an ad."

"Same principle, though."

"But, you know, who would do that? And why? What would be the point?"

"Well, maybe you both had the same dream independently."

I turned to her. "You know how unlikely that is?"

"Well... you guys did talk about how I'd eventually tell him how I felt. Maybe you both... maybe subconsciously you both kind of extrapolated what would happen when I did. And maybe I'm predictable enough that you both came to the same answer."

"But... what about the ring?"

"What about it?"

"It was the same one he'd already had made."

"So?"

"So, how did I know what it looked like?"

"You must have seen it already."

"Seen it already? Where?"

"I don't know. Maybe you saw it in his locker or something."

"Well... maybe. It just seems like a lot to assume."

"Still, I don't know what other explanations make as much sense."

We had reached the Planet Express building. Leela walked over to the seawall and sat atop it. I hopped up and sat next to her.

"So how have you been otherwise?" she aksed.

"Okay. Gotta get used to a new boss."

"Yeah. What's Clyde's story?"

"I don't know. He only said that he ran his family's mining company. Then he sold it and bought us."

"Hmmm." She said it doubtfully.

"You think he's lying to us?"

"Well, it seems inadvisable for him to lie to you about that. I mean, you could look up the mining company and see whether it exists. But it would be harder for you to find out if he's not telling you everything."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, maybe he has another occupation."

"Like what?"

"Could be anything."

"You're saying _maybe_ and _could be_ a lot," I said.

"Well, sure. I don't know anything for certain. All I have are guesses."

We spent the next couple of minutes listening to the waters of the East River lapping against the seawall.

"So you're gonna have Fry stay with you for a while?"

"Yeah."

"And Bender?"

"Yeah."

"Hope you're insured."

She was glancing at me out of the corner of her eye, and her lips were turned upward. She was messing with me.

"He won't be _that_ bad," I said with a smile of my own.

After another pause, she said, "For how long?"

"How long are they staying with me?"

"Yeah."

"I dunno. A couple of weeks, at least. As long as we need."

"As long as who needs?"

I looked up at her.

"Fry, or you?" she continued.

I couldn't answer that.

"Well, I'm not criticising," she said. "I wouldn't want to be alone either if, you know, if something different happened."

"You mean, if Fry died?"

"Yyyeah," she answered slowly. "Fry... or you."

"Me?"

"What? You don't think it'll happen to you? I used to think the same thing."

"No, I just... you really like me that much?"

"Of course I do, stupid. You and Fry are the best friends I've ever had. I can't tell you how much that meant to me."

"Well, you know, I feel the same way about you and Fry."

"Yeah, I know."

I leaned over and rested my head on her shoulder, wrapping my arms around her waist. She embraced me in return and stroked my head.

"But you're not really you," I said.

"No. That's true."

"And how come sometimes I can hold you like this and other times..."

I let go of her and attempted to poke her arm. As I expected, my finger went straight through her.

"Amy, it's a dream. Come on. Like anything in a dream ever makes sense."

"Sometimes real life doesn't make sense either."

We both stared at the ground for a moment. Then she took my hand and said to me, "Well, I'd better go. Talk to you later."

"Yeah."

She crouched atop the seawall, facing back toward the street. Then suddenly she leapt backward off it and into the water.

I watched her swim away to the north. I could still see her by the reflected city lights when she turned back to me and waved. I waved back.

It wasn't until I woke up that I realised that we had both been completely naked the whole time.

* * *

My unruly schedule continued: after barely sleeping at all the previous night, I woke up and found that it was already well past 16:00.

When I stumbled out of my bedroom, Fry told me that BW had called. Clyde had gotten us tickets to that night's Knicks game.

I don't really like basketball all that much. At Mars U I lettered in track, and I competed in a couple of mini-tetrathlons on Mars. The only sporting events that I'd ever gone to were Leela's blernsball games, a couple of Mars football matches, and the numerous Martian rodeos that my parents dragged me to.

Nonetheless, I went to the game. Fry, Bender, and I stopped for dinner first.

"I think it's breakfast for me," I said.

"Lunch in my case," Fry added.

"When did you get up?"

"Like, around noon. I was... well, I was working on a letter."

When he said that, I thought of stories I'd heard on occasion about people who'd lost loved ones. It was said that it can be helpful to write letters to them. It can provide closure, or something.

But when I looked up at him, he continued, "I felt kinda bad about not being able to go to Captain Arensen's memorial service, so I wrote her mother a letter. Could you sign it too?"

"Sure," I said. "What's it say?"

"Well, I kind of talked about how I didn't get a chance to meet her, but just the fact that she signed up for that mission says a lot about who she was and what she stood for. And then I said a little bit about Leela, how they were both completely dedicated, knew no fear, all of that. Be proud of her, the point was."

Fry was so resilient. He handled a week of captivity in the cold outside robot Santa's fortress. He shrugged off two straight days making hundreds of deliveries immediately afterward. All with his chest full of the millions of tiny fragments that had been his heart.

Robot Santa had released Fry when he was about to depart on Xmas Eve. And just minutes afterward, a small two person spacecraft, the _Muggsy Bogues_, screamed into the Neptunian surface, right where Santa's rocket sled was about to take off. Wanda Arensen had piloted her craft to its destruction – and her own.

"Did you get to talk to her?" Fry said.

"Yeah, a little. The captains met with me a lot that week. She was kind of shy. Didn't say much. I only talked to her directly once."

"What'd she say?"

"Not a lot," I answered. "She told me she and Zarakha had only served together on the _Muggsy_ for a few months. When I aksed her what kind of career plans she had, she was just like, 'I don't know. I just want to, you know, make a difference.'"

"Well, she did that," Fry responded.

"Yeah. She sure did. When was the service?"

"Tuesday."

"It's too bad we couldn't go."

"Yeah. But Kif was there. And a lot of other people from the mission."

I wasn't ready to see Kif again. But of course, the next day, I would. And it would turn out worse than I'd expected.

Fry and I both had pasta salad. I aksed him how the Knicks were doing.

"Never shoulda traded Mark Partizzle."

"Who's that?"

"Plays forward. They traded him to the Golden Planet Warriors before this year. Dumb."

"Who'd they get back?"

He listed off the items. "Bunch of draft picks. Fozzie Schinzus. Ternell Waxlorpka. Some other guy. They're all jump shooters. Knicks need a centre. You know something? The Knicks haven't had a good centre in a thousand years. Ewing's Curse, they call it. It's too bad I wasn't frozen wearing my Ewing jersey. You know how much that would be worth today?"

"No."

"Me neither. Anyway, I think the Knicks are seventh in the East right now."

Bender added, "Yeah. They'll probably get to the playoffs and then flame out in the first round. Just like every year."

I aksed, "So who are they playing tonight?"

"The Clippers," Fry told me.

"Where are they from?"

"55 Cancri A," Bender said. "They play on a planet that's, like, five million kilometres from its star. Planet's hotter than Venus. Don't know why 'Clippers' makes sense."

"Are they good?"

Bender shook his head. "Only at home. They shut off the air conditioners. Teams used to have guys pass out by the end of the third quarter. Now the visiting teams always have these things implanted in their bodies. Like air conditioners, only for your blood. Clippers are still pretty good at home, though."

"I didn't know about that," Fry said.

"Yeah, just another in the long list of idiotic things organisms do."

* * *

The Knicks won by seven. During the game, BW and I talked about what it had been doing after we graduated. I think it had wanted to know about Leela. I just didn't feel like talking about that.

"You're so lucky," it said to me. "You've had a steady job for years. You came out of college with a profession waiting for you."

Bender leaned across Fry and me to add, "And she's riding her parents' gravy train. Woo woo!" He imitated a train whistle.

Fry said, "Gravy train? Isn't that the name of a professional mud wrestler?"

"No, that's Gravy Pain," Bender answered.

"Oh, yeah. I like that one thing she does. You know, with the choke hold and the flying Saturnian and the scream, you know, _Paichaaaaa!_ I like that."

"Know what that means?"

"What?"

"It means _I am about to sneeze_."

"It does not!"

"Seriously. Met her trainer once. That's what he says."

"You're messing with me."

Having lost interest in that discussion, I turned back to BW and aksed, "So what were you doing?"

"All kinds of shit. I worked at a publisher for a while. Then I was at the βBC, and then a medical supplier. Then a uranium mine."

"What kind of work did you do?"

It said, "Mostly mechanical. You know, repairs and stuff. Sometimes IT management, if they needed it. Anyway, the uranium mine was where I met Clyde and Choto. They visited, thinking about buying the company. They bought out my contract instead."

"So how long have you been with them now?"

"About a month. Mostly I fix their car and their computers and stuff. When you came to visit, they were about to buy a shipping company. Turned out it was your company. Stroke of luck, right?"

"Yeah," I said, not very enthusiastically.

BW didn't seem to notice my tone, and I wasn't sure how to handle it. I mean, it was good that I was getting another chance to hang out with BW, one of my friends from college.

But let's be clear. BW's no Leela.

It could try to sympathise with me, but I don't think there was any way I could talk with it on level terms about what I was going through.

Instead, it and I spent the rest of the game talking about people we knew from college. I hadn't really seen anyone since graduation, so it told me about some of our friends from classes and from the track team.

When Fry, Bender, and I got home, I immediately went _plunk_ onto the couch. Fry turned on the news and then brought me a box of chow mein noodles I'd left in the refrigerator.

I wondered how he knew that was what I wanted.

When he sat next to me, I slid over and rested my head in his lap. He put the box down between his knees.

We both grabbed little clumps of noodles with our fingers as we watched. I ended up eating more of them, though.

As we were watching Humorbot – the human guy from _All My Circuits_ was on – Fry dropped a couple of noodles onto my face. "Sorry," he said.

That was actually the first thing either of us had said in the hour after we got home.

I looked up and gave him as warm a smile as I could. "It's okay."

I tried to collect the strands with my tongue, but it wouldn't reach that far. Finally Fry plucked them off my face and dangled them over me. I lifted my head up a little bit so I could grab them in my teeth and slurp them up.

He gave me the last few noodles, one at a time, in this fashion.

The dangling the noodle part, not the dropping the noodle onto my face part.

* * *

I was still on the couch when I woke up in the middle of the night. When I sat up, I found my blanket around me. Fry had clearly taken it from my bedroom and tucked me in.

In the darkened living room, I stared at the wall for what seemed like hours before I finally fell asleep again, visions of Fry dancing through my head.

* * *

That afternoon, Fry saw me on the couch, saying, "Hey. You're up."

"Yeah. Sort of."

"Want to go out tonight?"

"To what?"

"A _party_." He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the galaxy.

"What kind of party?"

"Um, a New Year's Eve party."

"That's today?"

"Yeah," he said. "It falls on the thirty first this year."

"Fuck you." I threw my pillow at him, and he flung it right back. We were both laughing.

He continued, "Yeah, Clyde got us tickets at a club. A place called Sponge."

"Sponge? Wow."

"Is it good?"

"I don't know," I told him. "It opened a couple of months ago. Supposed to be a big thing."

"You mean like, everybody who's anybody?"

"Yeah."

"Cool," he answered. "We're anybody."

That night, Bender grilled some sort of fish for us. It seemed like he was gradually reverting to his previous incompetence at cooking.

Afterward, I spent almost an hour trying to find something to wear. Finally I dragged Fry into my bedroom.

"You can just wear that," he said, indicating what I was already wearing.

I replied, "At Sponge? Gr'uh! Why don't I just show up naked?"

From the next room, Bender shouted, "Yeah! Why don't you?"

Fry said, "Why? Do they have a dress code?"

I answered, "Well, not a real one, but I mean, I'm not going there looking like _this_."

"Why?" he aksed. "You look good."

"Yeah, whatever."

"No. I mean it."

I looked up at him. He shrugged slightly, as if to say _Well, it's true_.

In another bit of nonverbal communication, I smiled a little, a smile that said _That's sweet. Thanks._

I said, verbally, "Are you going to wear that?"

He looked down at his normal clothes: a red jacket over a white shirt, a pair of jeans, and sneakers.

"Yeah," he said, "unless you think I should wear something else."

"No, you'd look good like that. You're old school."

"I'm _really_ old school."

"So what do you think I should wear?"

"I don't know," he said. "What do you have?"

I slid open the doors to my primary closet.

He stood in the doorway for a moment. Then he turned to me.

"This room needs a soundtrack," he said to me. "Like _baaaam, baaaaaaaam, baaaaaaaaam, BA-BAAAAAAM!_ Like that."

He was singing the opening of _Also Sprach Zarathustra_. I could sort of understand why.

The room is about six metres long. Along each side are four racks of clothes that can be rotated to the front.

I moved the eveningwear racks to the front and stepped in. Fry followed me, gazing at the numerous articles of clothing.

He pulled a red dress out. "I always liked this one."

I looked over and saw that it was the Fry dress.

Well, that's what I call it. It's the one I'd worn on Valentine's Day a few years ago, when he was parked on my shoulders.

I never wore it again after that.

But I was thinking about it before I finally put it away and looked through the others. A lot of them were things that I'd worn on my various dates with Kif. So that disqualified them.

"How about this?" Fry said.

I looked over at the one he was holding. _That might work_, I thought.

It was a black dress, backless and strapless, the kind that clings to the skin. The top of it sank into a cleavage exposing _V_, and beneath that, there was an inverted _V_ of semitranslucent mesh fabric that continued down diagonally so that the sides of the thighs were visible. The cut was to about the middle of the thigh.

I took off my sweatsuit and handed it to Fry before I slipped on the dress.

When I looked up at him, he was shaking his head. "Take off the bra."

I started to giggle. "Yeah, you _wish_ girls would take off their bras on command."

He stammered, "Yeah, but... that's... I... you know what I mean."

I did know what he meant. We needed to see what the dress looked like without my bra straps emerging from underneath.

I pulled the dress down a bit, and when I started to remove the bra, Fry turned around.

I stopped and said, "Fry, it's okay. You can look."

"No, I'd better not."

I rested a hand on his shoulder, and he turned around to look at me.

I thought maybe it had been because of Leela, but judging from the way he looked, that wasn't it. He was just being shy, I guess.

I said, "You can if you want to."

"You won't mind?"

"Of course not, dumbass. You've seen it."

I took off the bra and straightened the dress.

"Yeah, that looks good," he said.

"Okay."

"Well, let's go and... um... celebrate."

"Yeah."

As I applied my mascara, I began to wonder if he was finally beginning to get over Leela's loss.

I thought, _He'd be ahead of me_.

* * *

When we got there, around 22:00, we discovered a line that stretched around the corner. I said to Fry, "We'd better not have to wait in line."

"No, it's okay." He led us to the front door, where a bouncerbot was busy conversing with some people in the line. It looked like they were trying to bribe him, and it looked like he couldn't determine the appropriate amount of contempt to display.

As we approached, the bouncerbot turned to us. "Mr Fry, Ms Wong, Mr Rodriguez? This way, please."

He lifted the velvet rope and opened the door for us, saying, "Enjoy your new year."

"You got it, bro," Bender responded as we entered.

* * *

We walked in and saw the main dance floor in front of us. It was recessed about a metre and surrounded by a set of steps. Though it was fairly early for a nightclub, the floor seemed just about full. A bar lined the wall to our left, a smaller bar was located in the far right corner, and the open elevators took up the rest of the right wall. The wall in front of us was a large window, extending up to the roof.

The room we were in was actually five floors high; each of the upper four floors had a balcony that horseshoed around the right, back, and left walls. In the dim lighting, I could see a few people looking over the railing to the first floor. The DJ's booth was immediately above us on the second floor.

Like most clubs, the main lights were low but supplemented by a variety of coloured spotlights that panned rapidly around the room. A seemingly aimless variety of holographic images twisted high in the open space above the floor and faded into one another: robots, cactuses, fractals, planets, fish, spacecraft, nebulas.

"I'll see you organisms later," Bender said as he walked off with a fembot.

"Sure," Fry said. He pointed to our right and aksed me, "Hey, what are those?"

"Open elevators."

"_Open_ elevators? How's that work?"

"You haven't seen those before?" I aksed him.

He shrugged. "Guess not."

"Come on." I led him over to one of them. At first glance it was an empty rectangle on the floor with a panel on the wall behind it. As we stepped onto the rectangle, I hit the button for the top floor. With my left hand, I took his hand. "Hang on," I told him.

"Hang on to what – whoa!"

Our feet lifted off the ground as we accelerated upward and started to move through the rectangular holes in the floors above us.

Fry looked down to the receding first floor. "Man, this is great! How come I haven't seen this before?"

We got to the fifth floor, and the floor closed beneath our feet. I led him off the rectangle and told him, "It's kind of expensive. Most buildings tend to use traditional elevators."

"Why's it expensive? It's just hovering, right? I mean, you can make anything hover."

"No, you can make anything with a hover chip in it hover. It takes a lot more energy to make something else hover. And hovering at high altitudes is tough, too. And you need failsafes, so that people won't fall too far if there's a power cut."

"Let's go again!"

I figured he hadn't really been listening to me, but I didn't mind. He dragged me over to one of the other rectangles and punched the first floor button. Nothing happened, and he began to jab it repeatedly.

"Gl'uh!" I said pointing to the yellow light at the top. "Somebody's using it under us."

He aksed, "So do we have to use a different one?"

"No, just wait."

In a moment the light flashed green. After three flashes, the floor opened and we descended to ground level.

As we walked toward the bar, Fry said to me, "We need one of those in our building."

Someone pushed us from behind and shouted, "Gotcha!"

I turned around and, sure enough, it was BW. It stood between us and had an arm draped over each of us.

"Hey, BW," we said.

"Just saw Bender. Looks like he's having fun."

"Yeah, and it smells like you started having fun already," Fry responded.

"I'm not _completely_ drunk," it answered.

"Pretty damn close," he told it.

I aksed it, "So who else is coming?"

"Clyde and Choto. I don't know when they'll be here. Anyway, I'm going to the hip hop room. Coming?"

"I'll go," Fry said.

"Amy?"

"I'll pass."

It said, "Okay. We'll try to find you before midnight, kay?"

"Sure."

They went over to the elevators.

As I stepped toward the dance floor, I listened to the music in the main room. This was 28th century trance, something I really liked. I'm no music historian, but I liked a lot of music from that era, when Earthican musicians were influenced by some of the cultures on the opposite side of the galaxy that were just being contacted for the first time.

So I hung out on the floor for a while. Then I went off to some of the other rooms. Each floor had a side room with a different DJ, and monitors by the elevators listed the performers in each room. I visited the hard industrial and Andromedan rooms briefly before I found myself parked on the fifth floor balcony looking down at the ground floor.

A cheer went up from the crowd down there, and in the DJ booth, I could see a handover taking place. Clubs can have all sorts of mechanisms for playing music, starting with the old fashioned turntables that may date back all the way to Fry's time. But at Sponge, they had what looked like highly complex digital mixing panels. Basically, the DJs plug in a memory can containing all the tracks they want to choose from. They can select them on either of the two panels and adjust location, pitch, audio balance, and huge numbers of other variables. Then they listen on a headset before they actually mix the track into the feed to the loudspeakers.

And when they hand over, usually the new person will start a track on one of the panels and mix it in with the previous DJ's last track. The music changed subtly; the guy in the booth was handing control over to a woman who had just arranged her first track and was waving to the crowd. I looked closer and saw that it was actually two women. Then I looked even closer and saw that it was actually one woman with two heads.

_LAUREN AND KHALI D'INAZHIO_, read a display below the booth.

I'd heard of them. I didn't know that they only had the one body, nor did I know how popular they were. But they must be big to have the New Year's set. Or perhaps they were newer performers who were talented enough that the club hoped this night would launch them to stardom.

If that was the case, they seemed to be off to a good start. With a sudden echoing _thump_, the track faded away into a bridge. A much fainter bass line continued before it gave way to a piano segment.

Sometimes tracks include a little bit of traditional musical elements. But they tend to insist on updating the traditional instruments in some way, and usually, they do that by adding an echo. That gives the listener more of an ethereal sense, a sense that this isn't just music. A sense of, perhaps, floating inside a space station that doesn't have artificial gravity.

Another cheer rose from the ground floor during this bit. Normally, a bridge segment like this will gradually return the track to its prior strength by adding in one element at a time. That's always the part I like, when you can tell that the intensity is going to jump. It's just a matter of how.

I couldn't pay attention to how this track would return, because over my shoulder I heard someone say, "Amy."

I turned around. "K... Kif."

Out of uniform, he looks much different. He had a dark grey collared shirt with black pants, which was really more of a business casual look but seemed to work fairly well here.

He said, "Um... hi."

"Hey."

"So... umm... how was your Xmas?"

"Pretty good."

"Um, good."

"Yeah."

I should send my dress to the Awkwardness Hall of Fame. They could put it up in a display case with the text: _On New Year's Eve 3003, Amy Wong wore this dress at a club where she met Kif Kroker. Barely a week before, she had broken up with him at an office Xmas party after she discovered his irritable bastard tendencies. At the club, the hesitant, sluggish conversation reached as high as 88 on the Standard Awkwardness Index._

I said, "So... what brings you here?"

"Captain Brannigan got me tickets some time ago. Actually, I was planning to take you."

"Really?"

"Well, I know you like to party, so I figured you'd want to be here. Of course, I forgot that I might run into you anyway."

"Well, it's not _that_ awkward."

He responded, "It's awkward enough, I think. Anyway... um... may I aks... are you... um... are you here with anyone?"

I shook my head. "Well, I mean, some friends from work are here, but I'm not, like, _with_ anyone."

We stood and stared at the walls for a moment. Then someone came up to Kif from behind and gave him a hug, saying, "Hey there, sweetie. Have you..."

She looked up at me and said, "Oh. Amy Wong. Hi."

She was Kif's species, a little taller than him and a complexion a little bit darker. She pulled her arm from around Kif and extended it toward me. She, like Kif, was wearing black gloves. But in her case, they were opera gloves that went up past her elbows. Her dark blue dress didn't expose much, but it fit tightly enough that her breasts could be spotted easily.

As I shook her hand, she introduced herself. "My name's Triton Glab."

"Triton Glab?" I aksed.

"Yeah. See, you and I have something in common."

"Powerful parents, you mean?"

"Yep." Triton Glab was the daughter of the DOOP general secretary. I didn't know anything else about her.

So I aksed. "What do you do, Triton?"

"Well, I serve in the DOOP navy. I was actually on the _Nimbus_ for a while. I hope you don't mind me saying, but I had the biggest crush on Kiffy here. Eventually I requested a transfer to another ship. But when I heard you two had broken up... damn, this makes me sound like such a bitch, doesn't it?"

_Yes_, I wanted to say.

She continued, "Anyway, I guess I kinda, you know, swooped in. Called him the other day, and he invited me here."

"So, this is your first date?" I aksed.

They answered simultaneously. She said "Yeah," but Kif said "Kind of."

I looked back and forth between the two.

Triton explained, "When he said he didn't know what to wear, I figured I'd take him shopping in the afternoon."

I said, "Well, you got him something good."

"That was his choice."

I turned back to Kif. "Well, you got yourself something good."

He responded, "Um... thanks."

After yet another pause, I said, "Well... I'm going to go, um, find my friends."

"Okay. Well, it was nice meeting you," Triton said.

"Yeah. Good to meet you."

Kif added, "Um, s... see you."

As I took the elevator down to the first floor, I muttered, "Swooped in, my ass."

* * *

_Night  
Here comes the night  
Flight  
I want to take flight  
Light  
From here I can't see light  
Fight  
Without you I must fight_

_Why  
You left, I don't know why  
Buy  
More time I cannot buy  
Cry  
All day, all night I cry  
Try  
I can't, but I must tryyyy!_

I spotted Fry sitting at the bar.

_Why did I have to lose you?  
What price am I paying now?  
Why couldn't I have one more try?  
Why can't I just kiss you?_

I walked over to him. I noticed the voice singing this track.

_Here  
I must run far from here  
Fear  
Your voice fills me with fear  
Beer  
My tears swim in my beer  
Clear  
My job now is so cleeear!_

Her voice was striking, maybe even haunting. I listened to the words to this track.

_Why did I have to lose you?  
What price am I paying now?  
Why couldn't I have one more try?  
Why can't I just kiss you?_

Fry's tears swam in his beer.

_Why can't I just kiss you tonight?  
You left me but it wasn't right  
And now I am an awful sight  
And so we'll never goooo!_

I gripped his shoulders in my hands. He turned to me.

_Why did I have to lose you?  
What price am I paying now?  
Why couldn't I have one more try?  
Why didn't I kiss you?_

He looked at me briefly, and then over my shoulder to the front door.

I took his hand.

We walked out of there, with a good hour still remaining in 3003.

* * *

As we left, we walked past the line, which appeared to be much longer than when we entered.

I was looking at the people we passed, but not really paying attention.

Until one person.

I only got a quick look at her. She had to be no older than twenty, with short black hair and a white tube top. She was tall and skinny, the body of a model.

After we walked past her, I snapped my head around. But I could only see her from behind, so I'd missed the feature I noticed first.

"What?" Fry aksed. He'd come to a halt next to me.

I pointed. "Did you see her?"

"Who?"

"That tall girl? Black hair?"

"What about her?"

I was dumbfounded. "You... you mean you didn't notice?"

He shrugged. "Guess not."

I turned away from her and leaned in closer to him. My voice dropped, as though I was sharing state secrets.

I said, "She had one eye."

He looked over my shoulder at her for a moment. Then he looked back at me, wide eyed. "Sh... sh... she did?"

"Yeah."

"You're... you're sure?"

"I _think_ so."

"It wasn't just, like, the light or anything?"

"No, I sure thought she had one eye."

Fry started to walk back toward her. I whispered, "What are you doing?"

I guess he didn't hear me, because he went right on up to her. He stood immediately across the rope from her and said, "Um... excuse me."

She turned to him.

I could only see her pointy nose and her sharp jaw.

I edged closer.

Fry said, "Oh, sorry. I thought you were someone else."

As he approached me again, both of her eyes cast a scornful gaze back at him.

He took my hand again and led me away from Sponge.

* * *

We took the tube up Manhattan to Planet Express, and I spent the short trip convincing myself that I wasn't losing it.

_The lighting was poor._

_She was standing right in a shadow._

_She had a unibrow._

Naturally, the evidence seemed to support the opposing viewpoint.

Fry held my hand between both of his as he led me inside.

We went to the hangar and onto the ship. Fry took off and parked us in a polar orbit a few thousand kilometres above Earth's surface.

Once he shut the engines down, he turned to me and said, "So you know what today is."

"Yeah."

"And you know what it is to me."

"Yeah. The anniversary of the day you met her."

"Well, the day I came to the future."

"I thought you met her, like, as soon as you came out of the freezer."

"Yeah," he said. "But I also met Bender and the Professor the same day. So it's still an important day to me, even if... you know."

"Yeah."

We had a pause, and then he started to talk again. "You know, I was thinking about... you know what you said to me the other day?"

"What?"

"You know, about how much I love flying in space."

"Yeah."

"Well... you're right. That's, like, one of the best things about the future." He got up and walked up to the windshield, placing his palm up against the plastic. "You know, when I got frozen, only a couple hundred people or so had ever flown in space. Only, like, a few of them had even flown as high as we are now.

"And so space was... it was kind of an impossible dream. You know? Not the sort of thing that real people do. I mean, I'd given up hope of being an astronaut. Probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do. And I mean including, you know, now.

"Because I didn't really have anyone then. I could never get along with my parents, and my brother and I didn't really share a whole lot of interests. And it just seems easier now to deal with, you know, all this.

"And that's because of the other best thing about the future. And that's all my friends. Bender. Zoidberg. The Professor. Hermes."

He turned to me and continued, "You."

Just then my wrist rang. I ignored it at first, but Fry said, "Aren't you going to get that?"

So I did.

"Yeah?"

"Hey," BW said. "Can't find you."

"We left," I told it.

"You did? Why?"

I hesitated. "We just weren't in the mood, I guess."

"You and Fry?"

"Yeah."

With disappointment coming through loud and clear, it said, "But... I was kind of hoping we could all have the toast together."

"Sorry," I replied. "I don't think we'd be very festive, though."

"Oh. Okay. Well... umm... I guess I'll see you guys at work, then."

"Yeah."

Then Fry aksed me, "What time is it now?"

"23:53."

I got up and moved up to the couch at the front of the bridge. After a little bit, he sat next to me.

He said, "So was that Kif I saw at the club?"

"Yeah."

"Did you talk to him?"

"Yeah, I did. And I met his new girlfriend."

"His _new_ girlfriend?"

I nodded.

"Quick on the rebound, isn't he?"

"Well, at least she's the same species."

"She is?"

"Yeah. She's the daughter of the DOOP general secretary."

"Hm. So had you and Kif been planning anything for New Year's?"

"He said the Sponge tickets were for us, but he ended up taking Triton."

After another pause, he said, "You know, I was planning something special for New Year's, too."

"What?"

"This."

I looked over at him, puzzled.

"Well, you know what we did that New Year's when I came out of the freezer, right?"

I nodded. He, Bender, and Leela were wanted on job desertion charges. They found the Professor, Fry's only surviving relative, and escaped in his ship.

The very same ship that we were in now.

"I always wanted to take her up in this ship at New Year's," he added. "I figured we could watch all the fireworks going off all around the world. Then I remembered about time zones. Then I figured that watching all the fireworks going off in one time zone would still be pretty cool looking."

I looked down at my hands. My wrist showed only seventy three seconds until midnight.

"It's almost time," I told him.

I held my wrist up so we could both see. He held me in both arms, and I wrapped my free arm around him.

The clock continued to count down.

"Ten," he said.

"Nine," I joined in.

"Eight."

"Seven."

"Six."

"Five."

"Four."

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

Colours lit up in various cities on Earth's night side. Toronto. Boston. New New York. Charlotte. Panama. Quito.

I whispered, "Happy new year, Fry."

He whispered back, "Happy new year, Amy."

I leaned in closer to him. He was still staring out the windshield.

So I kissed him on the cheek.

He didn't respond.

* * *

We wouldn't get in to work again until Tuesday, the third day of 3004.

I, for one, needed it. Fry, Bender, and I just sat around on the couch those next two days, watching bowl games and movies and stuff.

I kept looking over at Fry, trying to build up the courage to tell him that I was falling in love with him again.

I mean, he knew. I was pretty sure of that. But he didn't feel the same, and so it's been driving me nuts trying to figure out whether or not I should tell him.

First I would think about how Fry and Leela never got anywhere because she couldn't be honest with him.

But then I would aks myself why I'm basing my decisions on the very same relationship that I don't want to keep reminding him of.

And as much as I tried not to bring it up, the topic had a way of showing up on its own. Late on Sunday night, Fry had gone to the kitchen to get some food, when I suddenly heard him yell, "Yowwww!"

I jumped up from the couch and found him putting down a vegetable knife and a carrot. His left hand had a small cut on the palm, and it was starting to bleed.

"What happened?" I aksed as I reached for the Mend-Aid.

"I dunno," he said. "I guess I just missed."

"Missed?"

I ran the device across the cut, and as it got patched up, he responded, "Yeah. I was... I was distracted."

"What do you mean?"

"I was just thinking about something."

I didn't say _What?_ out loud, but I kind of tilted my head a bit to one side. He got the message.

"Well... it was after Leela and I had dinner with her parents."

He picked up the plate containing the uncut half of the carrot and the slices he'd already cut off. We settled on the couch again, and as I plucked a couple of slices off the plate, I aksed him, "When did you have dinner with them?"

"It was that Thursday, I think. We were on our way back to Leela's apartment, you know, just talking about her parents. I was all, 'What the hell kind of name is Munda, anyway?' And so when we get up there into her apartment, she suddenly says, 'Oh, I got something for you.' And of course, I'm all, 'Oh, I bet you do!' And so she grabs me, and kisses me, and pins me to the wall."

I started to giggle, and Fry aksed, "What?"

I said, "Nothing. I was just thinking, I can't imagine her ever doing that with any other guy."

"Oh." He continued, "And then she slips a blindfold over my eyes, and then before I know it she's got, like, cuffs or something around my wrists. I'm all, 'What the hell?' And she just puts her finger over my mouth, and she just goes, 'I'll be back in a sec.'"

I aksed, "Did she just leave you there?"

"Yeah. I could hear the door hiss shut, and I was like, 'Leela?' No answer. And then I try to go to the door, and I realise she's cuffed me to, like, some sort of hook or something on the wall. I couldn't get out of it."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"So what did you do?"

"Nothing. I just waited there."

I looked at him for a second, and then I aksed him, "So... did you like it?"

"You know... I kinda did."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"I didn't know you were into bondage."

"Well, I didn't either. But, you know, just sitting there waiting for her, thinking about what we'd do when she got back... man, it just got me so hot."

"She did come back, right?"

He giggled a little bit. "Yeah, of course she did. Later she told me she was going to leave me there for an hour, but she started to worry and she came back after, like, twenty minutes. So I hear the door open again, and then she lifts me up onto my feet again and grabs my chin," – he demonstrated with his own hand – "and she whispers in my ear, 'So did you like that?' And I go, 'Yeah,' and she's like, 'You did?', and I'm like, 'Yeah, I did.'"

"What'd she say?"

"Well, she kind of tightens her grip on my chin," – he did the same until his cheeks and lips were all squished up – "and she's like, 'You like being hurt?' And I'm all, 'What?' And she goes, 'You like getting hurt, don't you? You like pain, don't you?' And then she pokes my neck with her fingernail."

"What? Really?" I aksed in surprise.

"Yeah. And then she says, 'Is that why you're in love with me?' And I go, 'What do you mean?' Only it sounds more like 'Wwayyafeem' or something. She just goes, 'You treat me like royalty, you bring me flowers, you join me when I'm up, you hold me when I'm down, you almost get yourself killed every day when I'm even slightly threatened. And what for? So that I can shoot you down again? So that I can blame you for getting us into the mess that I needed you to save me from anyway? So that you can go through to another day in your loveless, thankless life?'"

He went on, "And I just don't know what to say. Then she kisses me again, and she starts to unzip my pants. And... well... that's when I come."

He turned back toward me, and I think he noticed I was giving him an odd look.

"Well, usually I can't get hard when I'm nervous, or scared. But, you know, I knew she wasn't really going to hurt me. And just the way she held me, the way she whispered to me... I just kept getting harder and harder until I just couldn't keep it in any more."

"What did she do?"

"She started laughing. She took off the blindfold and the cuffs, and she just said, 'You can't even ejaculate right, idiot.' I felt bad about that. I think she wanted that time to be really special. And I ruined it."

"She wasn't mad or anything, was she?" I aksed him.

"No, I think she understood. Anyway, later that night, when I was ready, we went again, and afterward when we're lying in bed together, we're kind of curled up together, and she has her head on my chest, and then she looks up at me and goes, 'Hey.' I go, 'What?' She's like, 'Our hearts. They're beating in synch.'"

"Really?"

"Yeah. She had one hand on her own chest while she had her ear on mine. She grabs my head and pulls me down so that my ear's up to her heart, and then she takes my hand and puts it on mine, next to her head. And she was right. Our hearts were beating together."

I looked over at him. He was staring at the floor.

"It was just _ba-bump_, _ba-bump_, _ba-bump_. Perfectly synchronised. I couldn't really feel mine very well. Hers I could feel, though. I think we fell asleep like that, because when I woke up, I was kind of curled up sideways across the bed."

Silence filled the room.

Then he said, "How often does that happen? Two people's hearts beating together?"

Of course, it didn't mean anything. It would have been just coincidence.

But as symbolism goes? The only thing less subtle would be a love letter written in stars.

* * *

When we finally got to work on Tuesday morning, Hermes and Choto were already sitting at the conference table. She said, "Hey guys. How's your new year so far?"

Fry shrugged.

Bender shouted, "It sucks! I suggest we skip this year and go straight to 3005!"

Fry said, almost to himself, "I second that."

Just then, BW and Clyde entered. Clyde, carrying a large box under his arm, announced, "Okay, here's your delivery for this week."

Bender replied, "_That's_ your catch phrase? Your catch phrase eats hockey pucks!"

"Anyway," Hermes said, "you'll be gone for de rest of de week. De package goes to de capital of de Galaxy of Paranoia."

"The capital?" I aksed. "What's it called?"

"Dey were afraid to tell me."

* * *

I took the first shift at the controls of the _Leela_, with Fry and me alternating for twelve hour periods each. We were due to arrive toward the end of Fry's second shift, early Thursday morning New New York time.

After my first shift ended, I went back to my quarters. BW, who was on the flight along with Bender, Fry, and myself, looked up from its hammock.

"Hey Amy."

"Hey BW." I went over to my drawers and looked for something to wear in bed. I was just about to go to the shower when BW spoke up.

"So can I talk to you for a sec?"

"Yeah. Of course."

I sat down on the corner of my mattress. It turned over onto its stomach and looked down through the netting at me.

It said, "So what did you and Fry do after you left Sponge?"

"We came here."

"Where?"

"Here," I repeated. "The _Leela_."

"You did?"

"Yeah. We were orbiting Earth when midnight came. We could see all the fireworks going off in all the cities in that time zone."

Its face glowed as it smiled. "Really? Oh my god. Wow. That must have been so... so beautiful."

"Yeah."

"What?" BW could tell that my enthusiasm was lacking.

It took me a moment, but I did tell it what my concern was. "It's just... that's how he was planning to spend New Year's with Leela."

BW looked down at me for a moment before comprehension struck. "So he was dating her?"

"Yeah."

"And then she died?"

"Yeah."

"Damn."

"Yeah."

Then BW said, "How long were they together?"

"A week."

"That's not very long."

"It sure isn't."

BW continued, "It seems like he's taking it kind of hard."

I looked up at it, stunned.

BW continued to stare back at me.

I replied, "You kidding? We're lucky he hasn't killed himself yet."

"What do you mean?"

"He loved Leela. He always did. He still does. And for the last year or two, he'd been trying to get her to fall in love with him. Or at least to go out with him. But he didn't know that she was already in love with him. She was just too reluctant to give him a shot.

"But for that one week... they were both the happiest I'd ever seen them. I mean, it wasn't like the first week of a normal relationship, where you're just trying to get to know one another and you usually end up hiding a lot of things about yourself. They'd known each other for four years. They'd been on who knows how many missions together. One of them saved the other's life just about every trip. And by then I think they both knew just about everything there was to know about one another."

There was a pause, and then I continued. "I thought they were meant for each other. They both had a history that made them stand out. Leela was a mutant. Fry was from a thousand years ago. And as he came out of the cryogenic tank, Leela was, like, one of the first people he met. And because of him, she just suddenly decided to quit her job as a fate assignment officer.

"I guess what I'm saying is that they'd been through so much together, it was like they were dating for way more than just a week. I mean, Fry was about to propose to her. He'd gotten a ring and everything."

BW aksed me, "He was going to propose?"

"Yeah."

"You think she would have said yes?"

"Definitely."

"How do you know?"

"She said she would."

There was a pause before BW said, "I just can't understand how anyone could be ready to get married after just a week."

I thought about that for a moment. In time, I looked up at it and told it, "Well, like I said, they were different."

* * *

After I came back from the shower, BW wasn't in our quarters. I went straight to bed but never really fell asleep. Some time later, I heard the door slide open and saw the light enter from the hallway. BW was creeping in quietly.

As it climbed into its hammock, I said, "Hey."

"Hey," it responded. "You're still up?"

"Yeah."

"Well, make sure you get rested up. You got another long shift tomorrow."

"Yeah. I just can't sleep though."

I heard a _thud_ as it jumped out of its hammock. It flicked on the lamp next to my bed and sat next to me. I sat up in the bed.

BW aksed me, "You want, like, some warm milk or something?"

I shook my head. "But thanks for aksing."

It waved a hand at me, dismissively. "Hey, I need something to do on this ship."

"Aren't you cooking?"

"No. Bender wants to cook. He doesn't even want me to help him. And... well... he can be pretty persuasive, you know?"

"No," I answered in some bemusement. I can't remember the last time Bender ever persuaded me of anything.

BW went on, "Well, anyway. I guess we'll figure out my job around here eventually."

"I kinda figured you'd be the new engineer," I said.

"Fry told me you were the best at that."

"He did?"

"Yeah. I was just talking to him."

"Hm. What else did he say?"

"Not much. He didn't seem to be in a very talkative mood. He was kinda down, actually."

"He was?"

"Yeah. I kinda figured he was more open, at least from what you've told me about him. I... where are you going?"

I'd gotten up out of bed and was on my way out of the cabin. I turned back to BW and told it, "I'm gonna go talk to him."

As the door to the bridge hissed open, Fry looked back at me. "Hey Amy. Shouldn't you be in bed? You gotta rest up for tomorrow."

"Yeah, I know," I answered. "I can't get to sleep."

I sat on the floor, next to Fry's chair. This was getting to be a common occurrence, me sitting on the floor of the bridge with my head in Fry's lap.

"Hang on a sec," he said. He took my hands and lifted me up to my feet, leading me around to the couch at forward.

He sat at the port side of the couch, and I reclined across it, my head in his lap looking up at him.

He looked down at me and said, "You know, when you opened the door just now... for an instant I thought..." He averted his eyes and shrugged. "I thought it was Leela."

"You did?"

"Yeah. I still do that sometimes."

"Me too."

"Hard to get used to, isn't it?"

I said, "Yeah. It is."

A bit of silence went by, and then he said, "I was just talking to BW."

"Yeah. What did you talk about?"

"Not much. It aksed me what I thought its job should be. I said it was up to you. You're the captain."

"Well, I thought it could have my old job."

Fry looked down at me, puzzled. "Fixing the ship? You can still do that."

"Yeah, but what if we need to fix something while we're flying?"

He replied, "Well, you could fix her, and I could fly her."

"Yeah, okay, but what if we need to fix something, fly her, and shoot at someone all at once?"

He thought a moment. "Which one of those would it be best at?"

"Well... hmm."

"What did it major in in college?"

"Physics."

"So it would know how to fix the ship?"

"Probably not," I answered. "It did mostly astrophysics."

"What's that?"

"You know, structure of stars and galaxies and stuff. So I don't think it would know how the ship runs."

"Yeah, sounds like it would know more about what's outside the _Leela_ than what's inside her."

"That's a thought," I said.

"What?"

"BW could navigate."

Fry said, "I thought the computer navigated."

"Yeah, but it doesn't always do it well. I mean, there's a shitload of variables to consider when you're figuring out how to fly. Even present computers don't have the capacity to optimise long trips. You'll get a pretty good flight plan, usually, but I think having a human navigator could save some time and some fuel."

I got up and gave Fry a hug on my way out. "Thanks Fry. See you in the morning."

"Sure," he said.

When I returned to my quarters, the light was off. BW was in its hammock.

I slipped silently into bed, and I spent the next nine hours alternating between tossing, turning, and actually sleeping.

* * *

Each shift was separated by a changeover of one to two hours, wherein both Fry and I would be on the bridge together. Officially, it was so that we could pass along information about how the ship was handling, or how the flight was going, or anything like that. But really it was to give us a chance for some actual human interaction.

I'd only been on long deliveries like this a couple of times, and that was always as Leela's copilot. Fry had been on more long trips, but this was his first as the copilot. So it was a new experience for both of us.

Anyway, on the morning of the second day, Bender had prepared sausage, muffins, and breakfast burritos. He hasn't yet cooked anything as good as that first day after we lost Leela, but it's all edible now.

After Fry had gone to bed, BW had gone off to the gym, and Bender had gone to clean up the cookware, I was alone on the bridge. On a whim, I had the computer calculate a series of return trajectories from our destination. The fuel usage each time was within a fairly broad range – about a quarter of them used up more fuel than we could carry.

At that point, Bender returned to the bridge, saying, "Hey there vertebrate. We there yet?"

"Nope," I told him. "Still another twenty hours or so."

"Well, have fun."

As he turned to leave, I called, "Bender, hold up."

"Yeah?"

"Can I talk to you for a bit?"

"Sure you can," he said. "I mean, the only other choice is talking to yourself, and obviously it'd be more interesting to talk to me."

He settled into his chair on my left side. I looked over at him and aksed him, "How's the cooking?"

"You tell me," he answered. "You're the one with taste buds."

"Well... that's the thing," I said. "For a while your cooking was skank nasty. Then suddenly, after... you know..."

"After old Eyeball got voted off the island of the living?"

"Um... yeah. After that, you were like a metallic Elzar for a while. You haven't really made anything that good since then, but it's still a lot better than before."

He said, "Yeah. I know I used to do a lot of improvisation. You know, like if the recipe called for eggs, I'd use baby chicks instead."

I was probably turning green right about then.

He continued, "But... well... you know how you guys all deeply admire and envy me?"

"Um... yeah, of course." I went along on the assumption that his version of _deeply admire and envy_ corresponded to our version of _tolerate and become faintly bemused by_.

"Yeah. Everyone loves me." He looked away. "Except for Leela."

He grabbed a bottle from his compartment and took a drink. He'd knocked down about half the bottle when he turned back to me.

"I did, like, everything I could think of to try to earn her respect. Nothing seemed to work. I mean, she'll tell you when you're doing your job right and all, but she'll also tell you when you're doing it wrong. I always seemed to do it wrong."

He'd turned away and was facing out the windshield, but then he turned around to face me again. He went on, "Do you know what that's like? Doing the best job you can possibly do, only it's still not enough?"

I said, "Well, Leela was like that. She set such high standards, even for herself."

"For herself? Whaddya mean?"

"Well, a lot of times she'd get back from missions and she'd just be ranting about how she screwed up. Or... well, a few months ago she said she was still mad about sleeping with Zapp Brannigan. And, you know, that was, like, years ago. She was still angry about it."

"Yeah, she could be like that."

I added, "But you know what else? There was one time when the mutant newspaper interviewed her, and she was talking about all of us. She said something like, 'Bender and Fry, they're the best crew I could possibly aks for. Bender might be the most evil robot ever built, but he only uses his evilness for good, if that makes sense.'"

"She really said that?"

"Yeah. It's in the scrapbook."

After a pause, Bender said to me, "You know, one of my biggest wishes was to inspire paradoxical statements from my friends."

I laughed a bit. "Bender, you _are_ a paradox."

"Aw, thanks Amy." He got up and gave me a hug before he left the bridge.

I never knew a hug from a robot could be so comforting.

It was even more comforting to find my wallet still in my pocket, with no money missing.

* * *

"Hey," I said to BW as I entered our quarters. Fry was about twenty minutes into his shift. He'd come up to the bridge late in the changeover period, but so little was going on that I didn't have anything I needed to tell him. He just took the controls from me without a word.

"Hey Amy. Hey, can I talk to you about something?"

"Yeah. What?"

"Well... can you keep a secret?"

"Secret?" I aksed. "What kind of secret?"

"A big one."

"I dunno. Have you told Fry and Bender?"

BW hesitated. "Well, see, they're the ones I want to keep it from. I... _we_ need your help."

"'We'? Who's 'we'?"

"Clyde and Choto and me. We want you to help us with something, but we're gonna have to tell you something. So if you can't keep it secret, or if you just don't want to, that's fine. We'll just go by ourselves."

I must not have been on the same page as BW. "So, you have to tell me something, but you don't want Fry and Bender to know?"

"Yeah. We... well, we just want to keep it on a need to know basis, you know?"

"A need to know basis?"

"Yeah," it answered. "I don't think anyone should know unless they absolutely have to."

For some reason, I felt furious with BW.

It seemed to be implying that you couldn't trust Fry or Bender with a secret.

Well, maybe it had a point. But the fact remained, the two of them seemed like totally different people now. Even before, I would have trusted Fry with a big secret. I'd know there was a chance he might blurt it out at the most inopportune time, but I would have been willing to take the chance.

Bender couldn't keep secrets. That was just a fact of life.

But I was thinking of one of those dreams I had about Leela. _Being a captain is all about making the right decisions_, she'd said.

She hadn't mentioned trusting your crewmates, but that seemed to go with the territory. I mean, I needed their help.

And not just with flying the ship.

I was saying to myself, _Fry can fly this incredibly sophisticated device, the likes of which nobody could even have imagined in the era he came from, and yet I can't entrust him with a tiny little secret?_

And then I thought back to what Fry had said to Clyde. He'd described Bender, me, and himself as a three person union.

Finally, I shook my head and said to BW, "No, we're a team. Anything one of us knows, all of us have to know. So if you don't want Fry and Bender to know, don't tell me either."

BW paused. It seemed like it kind of wanted to tell all three of us. But then it said, "Well, I'll have to call Choto and see what she thinks. It's really up to her."

* * *

We arrived the next morning. Fry left to deliver the package as Bender and I waited on the bridge. BW was still asleep.

Surprisingly, it went off cleanly. I kind of had a hand hovering over the throttle in case we had to get out of there quickly. But we spotted Fry walking back to the _Leela_, hands in pockets, seemingly whistling.

We had breakfast after we took off, and I aksed Fry how the delivery went.

"Pretty smooth," he said. "They all had shades on, and they all seemed really nervous. When I gave the guy the clipboard, he was all, 'Umm... do I, like, have to sign my real name?' And I was all, 'No, you can just put whatever.' He was all, 'Okay,' and then he signed it."

He held out the clipboard for me to see. Sure enough, the line at the bottom had _WHATEVER_ written in longhand.

* * *

That night, after I'd handed control over to Fry, BW entered the bridge, with Bender trailing behind it.

"Hey," it said. "Can I talk to y'all for a bit?"

"Yeah," I replied. "What's going on?"

It sat at the couch. "Give me a sec," it told us. "Clyde and Choto want to talk with you guys."

Fry looked a question at me.

"They have a secret," I told him.

"What is it?" Bender aksed. "Did you kill a guy?"

"No," BW said, miffed.

"Did you kill a girl?"

"_No_."

"An androgyne?"

"_No!_"

"A hermaphrodite?"

"I didn't kill anybody, Bender!"

"Oh." He was silent for a moment. "An animal?"

BW didn't respond this time. It was busy with its wrist. After a few seconds, it said, "Okay, and here."

A holographic projection of Clyde and Choto appeared before us. They looked like they were sitting at the conference table.

"Hi guys," Clyde said.

"Hi," I answered.

"Hey, do we look like ants?" Fry said.

Choto sighed. "No. Now, we have a problem we'd like your help with. But we're going to have to share some information with you guys, and we want to make absolutely sure that said information will be kept in the utmost confidence."

"Why?" Fry said.

"Because," Choto shot back.

"Okay, I'm in," Fry answered.

"Why?" I aksed him.

He said to me, "Haven't you ever wanted to be a spy? It's like we get to be spies! It'll be great! People will go, 'Hey, what do you know about your boss?' And we'll be all, 'I'm sorry, I'm not at liberty to divulge that information,' or something. It's awesome!"

"Well, you've convinced me," Bender said. "I accept your terms, meatbags."

"Amy?" Choto aksed.

I looked back at Fry and Bender and said, "If they're in, so am I."

"Okay," Clyde responded. "Now if this gets out, I'll fire every one of you. Not only that, I'll make faces at you whenever I pass you on the street. Anyway, what you need to know is that I have another job."

_Damn,_ I thought. _She was right._

"I'm a private investigator," he went on. "And the most recent case I've taken on relates to your family, Amy."

"Really?"

"Yes. Your father and uncle, in particular."

I said, "But... my uncle's been dead for almost twenty years."

Fry turned to me in surprise. I realised I'd never told him about Marcus, my father's brother.

In response, Clyde said, "Yes, but my clients are interested in the particulars of his death."

"Why?" I aksed. "Do they think he was murdered?"

"I think they suspect something of the sort may have occurred, yes."

"Well, it didn't," I told him. "I was there."

Fry's eyes widened.

"Right," Clyde said. "We figured you could help disprove their suggestion. You probably have access to plenty of medical records and such that we wouldn't. So maybe you could dig those up, and we could resolve this case."

"Well, I don't know," I said. "What would you do for me in return?"

Choto said, "We think we could increase your wages by about ten percent."

"What about Fry and Bender?"

"Will you need their help?"

"Yes."

"Very well. We'll give them raises as well."

Fry and Bender were high fiving one another.

"You've got a deal," I told Clyde and Choto.

* * *

I didn't really talk much to the others the rest of the way back to Earth. I was kind of thinking about my uncle. What I could remember about him, at least.

Anyway, we landed at around 03:00 this morning. Hermes was there, waiting for us.

"How was de flight?"

"No problems," I said.

"Clyde told ya about his other job?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Lock up when ya leave."

"You got it," I answered as he turned and left.

"You need to, like, inspect the ship or anything?" BW aksed me.

"Nope. We're done."

"Okay. I'll go home then."

"All right. See you," I said. As it left, Fry and Bender trudged down the stairs to the hangar floor.

"You ready?" Fry aksed.

I was about to go home with them, but then I remembered my new job.

"I've got to stay a little longer," I told them.

Bender shrugged. "We can wait for you."

"No," I insisted. "Go on home. I might be a while."

Fry aksed, "You sure?" There was a bit of concern in his voice.

It seems like there's always concern in our voices when we're talking to one another.

"Go ahead," I said. "I'll see you guys in the morning."

"It _is_ the morning, idiot," Bender shouted over his shoulder as they left.

* * *

I stood in the lab, staring at the helmet of my VR suit. I don't know how long I just stood there like that. Hours, it felt like.

Finally I said to myself, _Fuck it_, and slipped it on.

The directory listing appeared before me. I lifted my hand up and double clicked on **brainscanwong.exe**.

For a tiny fraction of a second, a bright flash surrounded me.

Then, I was standing on the roof of a building overlooking Times Square. Snow was falling all around me.

In front of me was, well, me.

Same sweat suit, same boots, same wrist communicator, same hairstyle.

"Hi," the other me said to me.

"Hi," I replied.

"Like the place?" she aksed.

I looked around. It was a cloudy simulated night. The wind was starting to pick up, blowing the snow past me and into her face. The VR suit can adjust the temperature in the helmet and in the gloves, but it can't go outside of a narrow range of temperatures.

Even so, the cumulative effect of the subtle chill on my extremities, plus the sight of wind blown snowflakes, made me feel cold.

"This is good," I said. I like snow in New New York. I don't like the sludge that the streets are coated in afterward, but while it's snowing, I like it.

I walked toward the edge of the roof. I could see spacecraft flying over us, traffic in Times Square, people walking around, the ridiculous visual cacophony of the illuminated billboards, everything that I would see if I was actually there.

To my side, the software me said, "I downloaded the layout of the real Times Square. I think I've got everything."

Cautiously, I stepped on the edge. Then I thought, _What the hell_, and hopped off.

Nothing happened. I was still standing at the level of the roof, even though there was no solid surface underneath me.

The snow continued to swirl beneath my feet.

"So you finally decided to run me," she said.

I stepped back onto the roof.

"Yeah," I said. "I've got, well, sort of a situation."

"What's that?"

"Well, the company's under new management."

"Yeah, I know."

"You do?" I said. "How do you know that?"

She didn't say anything. After a second, a window opened in front of her.

It was the press release announcing the sale of the company to Clyde.

I went on, "Yeah. Well, he's got another job."

The window snapped shut, and she said, "He does?"

"Yeah. He's a private investigator, and he's working on a case about Dad."

"What about Dad?"

"Well, it's about him and Uncle Marcus."

She was looking at me uncertainly. "Uncle Marcus?"

I nodded. "They think maybe it wasn't an accident."

She stared at me for a short moment. Then she suddenly turned away and walked slowly toward the ledge.

I looked up and noticed that a browser window had opened in front of her.

Then, in the blink of an eye, loads more windows opened up all around us. They appeared and disappeared faster than I could follow. Pages flashed up on all of them.

The software me stopped in her tracks. The windows surrounding us all froze on the pages they were showing.

"The hell..." she muttered.

"What?" I aksed her.

She turned around to face me. As she did so, most of the windows disappeared. Two flew from different places – one settled to her left, one to her right.

"Look at these," she said.

"What are they?"

"You remember after Leela died? Fry was talking about _Hamlet_?"

"Yeah. What is it?"

"It's a Shakespeare play."

"How come I haven't heard of it?"

She said to me, "Because of this." Pointing to the window on my left, she said, "Here's the copy of _The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged_ that we read as a junior, published 2996." She turned to my right and went on, "This is the one published the next year."

The windows were each showing a page from the table of contents. Highlighted in the right window, right between _As You Like It_ and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, was _Hamlet_.

I turned back to the one on the left and aksed, "It's not here?"

"Right. It's nowhere to be found in that copy. Sound odd?"

"Yeah. Why's it missing?"

"An interesting question," she said. "Know what _Hamlet_'s about?"

I sighed. "Of course not."

"Well, Hamlet's the prince of Denmark. His father, you know, the king –"

"Dj'uh."

"I knew you'd say that. Anyway, the king's just died, and almost immediately, Hamlet's mother remarries. She marries the king's brother. And Hamlet gets pissed off because he thinks it's too soon. And he ends up finding out that his uncle killed his father."

I stood there for a moment, staring at her.

This was almost too much.

I mean, what the hell are you supposed to do when something like that happens?

Actually, that's a question that I've been aksing a lot over the past few weeks: _What the hell am I supposed to do?_

Finally I repeated, "His uncle killed his father."

She nodded. "Very interesting, wouldn't you say?"

I said, slowly, "So... do you think that's what happened?"

"You want to see what else I found out?"

"Yeah," I replied.

The two windows reappeared. The one to my left showed my father's picture in the corner.

**PLANET OF MARS**  
**PILOT LICENSE**  
_WONG, LEONID MICHAEL_  
**ISSUED:** 18 MAR 3003 **EXPIRES:** 18 MAR 3005

To my right I saw a similar page with Uncle Marcus's picture.

**PLANET OF MARS**  
**PILOT LICENSE**  
_WONG, MARCUS RICHARD_  
**ISSUED:** 20 MAY 2984 **EXPIRES:** 20 MAY 2986

Dad and Marcus were fraternal twins. But they looked similar enough that some people had thought they were identical. I could see the subtle differences in the wrinkles around the eyes, in the nose, and in the chin.

"Notice anything unusual?"

I looked back at the software me. In response to her question, I shook my head and shrugged.

Something in the corner of each page highlighted. They were UI numbers, Universal Identifiers. They were code numbers generated from a complex formula that took into account the person's genome along with biometric factors like fingerprints and iris measurements. That way, everyone would have unique UIs, even, say, the Professor and Cubert.

I looked back and forth between the two UI numbers. There did seem to be...

I read them more carefully.

And read them again.

I stammered, "What... what is..."

"Now look at this," she said.

A third window appeared, next to my father's pilot license. It showed a younger version of my father.

**PLANET OF MARS**  
**PILOT LICENSE**  
_WONG, LEONID MICHAEL_  
**ISSUED:** 27 MAY 2984 **EXPIRES:** 27 MAY 2986

I looked at the UI number on this license.

I shook my head. "I don't... this makes no sense."

She walked up next to me and said, "Here. Let me show you."

A few more windows opened up, and all of the open windows rearranged themselves in front of us. There were two rows, with the top row in blue and the bottom row in orange. About midway through, the top row stopped. The bottom row of windows continued on, but these windows were blue instead of orange.

We walked to the leftmost pair of windows. She pointed to the top one and said, "That's Marcus's birth certificate," and pointing to the bottom one, "and that's Dad's. Different UIs."

As we walked toward the right, the software me narrated, "These are their various pilot's licenses, renewed every two years. These all have Marcus's UI, and those all have Dad's. Now look at this."

We'd gotten to the point where the top row ended. The last one on the top row was the same license she'd shown me to begin with.

"The next time Dad renewed his license after Marcus died..." she began.

"...He was given Marcus's UI," I finished.

"And there's more. These are the original documents, okay? These aren't what you get if you just go to the Public Records site. If you go to Public Records, this is what you get."

She turned me around. Opposite us was a parallel series of windows, creating a mirror image of the first series.

The wind continued to blow the snow around. It seemed like the snowflakes were flying right along the rows of windows.

I turned back to the first series just to make sure.

The top row on this new series was orange, not blue. And the entire bottom row, not just the end, was blue. Taking a close look at the UIs showed that the other me had used the same colour coding scheme here.

She went on, "So they didn't just mix up their UIs once. Somebody actually got in and retroactively changed the UIs."

I stood there for a little longer, staring at the various licenses.

"We conclude three things," she said. "First, the man who died on the 28th of August 2984 was _Leo_ Wong, not Marcus Wong. Second, Marcus Wong has been posing as Leo Wong for nearly twenty years. And third, Marcus Wong has gone to great lengths to keep this from people – especially from you."

* * *

When I woke up, a little after noon, my wrist was flashing. When I hit play, I heard my own voice say, "Hey. Come log in as soon as you wake up. There's something you need to see."

Fry was still asleep, so I grabbed a sushi stick and went to the office.

The software me had aksed me to leave her running when I left. She'd E-mailed all the documents to me, and I'd forwarded them to Clyde and Choto. I'd gotten back a succinct "tx" reply.

When I put on my suit and logged in, the setting was a beach. But not an Earth beach. The sand was orange, the waters were purple, and the sky was kind of a pale green. Dark grey rocks towered over us just a few tens of metres in from the shore. There was a tiny, but brilliant blue, sun. I could see three moons around the sky.

"Hey," I heard from my right.

She was sitting on the sand, facing out to the ocean. She had on a purple bikini top and matching shorts, with bare feet.

I looked down and saw that I was wearing the same thing.

She placed her hand on the ground next to her and said, "Have a seat."

I sat down to the left of my digitised counterpart. I aksed her, "What planet is this?"

"None, really. I made all this from scratch."

"How long did it take?"

"Umm... about 488 microseconds."

"That's it?"

"Yeah," she said. "You'd be surprised how easy it is to get things done in here."

"So do you really think that fast?"

"Not quite. I mean, there's a really good interface between the VR engine that's making all this and the engine that's... well... that's running me. I kind of think things..."

She held out her hand, and a martini glass appeared in it.

"...And they happen."

I thought that over for a second. "So what about when you're talking to me?"

"Well, I actually do some background tasks all the time. Like, while I'm talking now, I'm also looking at a lot of things online. I mean, I seem to be thinking faster than a human, but only by a couple orders of magnitude."

"'Only' a couple orders of magnitude? Shit!"

"Well, it's not as fast as it seems. I also have to concentrate a lot on this world, and my appearance, and yours, and stuff."

I looked around for a moment, and then she continued, "Anyway, there's something important."

She tossed down her drink in a swift motion, about the same speed that I would do it in real life. She placed the empty glass down on a table, or at least she would have if there was one there. It disappeared as soon as she let go of it.

Just as last night, a browser window appeared in front of us.

She said, "This is the section of the Martian criminal code that deals with identity theft."

"Identity theft?"

"Yeah. Marcus Wong is currently wanted by the Martian police for impersonating the deceased Leo Wong. Look at this part."

Part of it was highlighted.

I read aloud, "The offence of identity theft as defined above shall be considered a capital offence in accordance with section 2.28-5a."

The words hung before us.

Through a tightened throat, I said, "Oh... shit."

"Yeah."

"Couldn't he, like, plea bargain or something? Get a lighter sentence?"

"I don't think so. You know how they are with big cases like this."

I did know how they were. Cases that might take a year on other planets would be done in days on Mars. There were limits on how much evidence you could introduce, how many witnesses you could call, how long you could question them. And the law didn't give judges very much leeway in sentencing. Whatever the law said the punishment for your crime was, that's what you'd get.

I said, "So what's gonna happen now?"

"Well, I think he knows they're after him."

"Could he, like, hide out on some distant planet until the statute of limitations runs out?"

"It doesn't."

I thought about it for a bit more and then said, "Why's it a capital crime anyway?"

"I think it was a big problem when Mars was settled. People who were wanted on other planets would go there and take somebody else's name. I think they wanted to impose stiff penalties as a deterrent."

"Doesn't get any stiffer than that."

She nodded, but then suddenly she looked away and said, quietly, "Wh... what?"

"What?" I aksed.

The window with the law text disappeared, replaced with a video window. It was a live news report on one of the Martian stations.

"...turned himself in to Martian authorities. Earlier today it was found that Marcus Wong had taken the place of his twin brother, Leo Wong, owner of the Buggalo Group and the highest ranking Martian on the Fortune 500,000,000 listing of the galaxy's wealthiest individuals. Marcus Wong was believed to have died in a mishap involving farming machinery nearly twenty years ago, but it now appears that Leo Wong was instead killed in that accident. Marcus faces the death penalty if convicted; the trial is due to begin on Monday."

The window winked out.

The waves crashed against our feet.

Airplanes flew over the beach.

Through a tightened simulated throat, the software me said, "Oh... shit."

I answered, "Yeah."

* * *

After that, I went to my quarters on the _Leela_ and just started writing. And now that I don't have anything more to write, I'm still here.

I think I'm afraid to come out and face reality again.

It's like I'm cursed or something. Everything around me is being ruined.

And what can I do besides just sit around and wait for whatever will happen next?

And I've still got that track echoing in my brain.

From here I can't see light.


	5. Thursday 12 January 3004: Abandon

_My Ship, fifth part: Abandon_

by Deb H

* * *

**Thursday 12 January 3004**

"You paying attention? This all going to be yours soon, you know."

"Not for a while, Mom. It'll be yours first."

"It mine already. Half mine. Then all mine. Then all yours. You have to know how to make traditional kung pao buggalo."

"I know how. You hit the kung pao buggalo button."

"More to it than that! Must choose right meat! Not too firm! Not too growth hormoney! Just right!"

"I'll be fine."

"You say that when you go off to college! You come back with ugly boys who not appreciate you! No more! Find man who appreciate you! Treat you with respect! What man ever respect you?"

I turned and looked over my shoulder at Fry. He was done with his breakfast, and he was staring out the window. He seemed like he wasn't listening to us.

My mother continued, "No man, that who! Not even green boyfriend! Your love life suck!"

That was the sentence that really hurt.

My love life _did_ suck.

I thought it had been going so well. I thought I'd finally found true love.

She was right about Kif. He hadn't shown respect for me. Sure, he said all the right things, he got me all the right gifts. But when I really needed someone, he wasn't it.

Fry was.

_No, no, no_, I said to myself. _Let's not take that road._

My father hurried in and said, "Come on, hurry! I not be late to my own execution! It look so bad!"

He's actually my uncle, but I'm still thinking of him as my father.

"I'm ready," I said. "Fry?"

Fry came back over from the window and said, "Yeah. I'm ready. Are you?"

I answered, "I think this is about as ready as I could be."

My father lifted my chin up and said to me, "Why you look like that? It look like you at father's funeral!"

He was the only one laughing.

My mood sank even further, but my emotional load seemed to lighten a bit when Fry took my hand and laced his fingers with mine.

"Okay, we go now," my father said. "Where your mother?"

I looked around. She wasn't in the room.

After a moment, she came in and said, "Ready?"

She was dressed the way she normally did, including the belt with a horseshoe buckle, the artificial leather vest, and her omnipresent cowboy hat. I had considered it – okay, agonised over it – and I had ended up wearing a black sweater. Fry had taken his cue from me and was dressed in a black suit and a black shirt, no tie.

The four of us walked out of the house knowing that three would walk back in.

But as those intolerable sluts, the fates, would deem, only two of us would walk back in.

* * *

After I heard the news about my uncle turning himself in, I logged out and went to my quarters on the _Leela_.

The software me had the proof. He was my uncle, not my father. And my father was long since dead.

The questions were racing through my head. Did my mother know? How did he change their pilot licenses? How could I not have found out?

And most importantly, _why?_

Why would my uncle kill my father and take his place?

They'd both had a share of the family fortune, so money wouldn't be it. Did they hate each other? I hadn't noticed, but at that age I hadn't been particularly aware of specific matters of interpersonal relations like that.

I was still pondering the whole thing when I heard a knock at the door.

"Amy? You in there?"

When I got up out of my bed and opened up the door, nobody was there.

"Amy?"

The voice was coming from down the corridor. I looked outside, and there was Fry.

"Hey," I said. "Come on in."

"Hey Amy." He gave me a hug, and we settled on the bed.

"So I heard about your father."

"Yeah."

"Um, your uncle, I guess."

"Yeah. How did you know I was here?"

"Just guessed. You weren't home, so I tried to call you, but I couldn't get through."

Then I noticed that my wrist had been off. I wondered when I'd shut it off.

"So you came looking for me?" I aksed.

"Yeah. I thought maybe you'd want me around."

"You thought right."

He put an arm around my waist, and I leaned over into his shoulder.

He said, "So do you think he did it?"

"I know he did."

"How? Did he tell you?"

"No, I haven't talked to him yet," I said. "But... remember what Clyde and Choto wanted me to do?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I... maybe I should just show you."

I got up and led Fry off the ship. As we walked up into the Professor's lab, I headed over to the closet and got out our VR suits. When I plugged us in, our point of view suddenly changed to the Martian surface. I looked around, and behind me was the meridian marker outside Airy.

Someone called Fry's name, ran up to us, and embraced him. It took a moment for me to figure out that it was the software me.

She said, "Fry! I missed you so much! How've you been?"

He looked back and forth between the two of us, saying, "Ummmm..."

Both of us were wearing my normal pink sweatsuit. She still had the same haircut and everything, and I couldn't spot any other ways to distinguish her from me.

She said to me, "Haven't you told him about me?"

I responded, "No, I was just about to."

"So... who are you?" he aksed.

"I'm her," she said, pointing to me.

He turned to me and said, "Did... did you clone yourself?"

"No," I told him. "Well, sort of."

"Yeah, I'm a software copy."

I added, "Yeah. You know how you can download a robot's brain?"

"Yeah?" he said.

"The Professor figured out how to do the same thing with human brains. She's a copy of me."

She said, "Yeah. I act just like she would if she was a computer program."

"So you're a computer program?"

"Yep."

"How do I tell you apart?"

I said, "Software Amy's the one you can't see when you take the helmet off."

Fry stood there for a moment. Then he turned to the software me and aksed, "So what do you do when nobody's logged in here?"

"I do a lot of reading," she told him.

"You do?"

"Yeah. I've got access to the entire Internet. I read a lot about your family."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Especially your nephew."

"The Professor?"

"No, your _nephew_," she said. "The first human on Mars."

"Yeah. You know, I still can't believe that someone from my family was the first person on Mars."

"Well, he was a lucky man."

"So was I."

"Anyway," I said, "he aksed me how we found out about Uncle Marcus."

"Yeah? Well, that was pretty easy. We went looking through the records and found that their UI numbers had been swapped."

"The hell's a UI number?" Fry aksed.

"That big long number on your pilot license," she said. "It's a unique identifier for any individual. The number on Dad's current pilot license is actually the same as the number on Uncle Marcus's original birth certificate."

I added, "But after we sent that in, we found out what the Martian punishment for identity theft is."

The software me continued, "So it's my fault that Uncle Marcus is going to be executed."

"No, it's my fault," I replied. "I'm the one who sent it to Clyde and Choto without finding everything out."

"Don't blame yourself," she said. "It was bound to get out some day."

"I guess," I said.

* * *

When Fry and I got home that night, Bender wasn't around. Fry threw some shrimp on the barbecue, and we had a quiet dinner.

"What?" he suddenly aksed me.

"Hm?"

"Not good times for you, are they?"

I shook my head. "I just... how come everything I do lately ends up killing somebody?"

"It's not that bad," he said. "You still have Bender. Hermes. BW. Nibbler. Your mother."

He trailed off, but I added, "You."

"Well, we're all here for you."

"For how much longer, though?"

"What?"

I reached out and grabbed his hand. "I just know it, Fry. It's not done yet. I just... I can't stop feeling that you're next."

"It's just the guilt," he said. "Like how you keep blaming yourself."

"Well, it is my fault. Shit. You'd think I'd have learned better from Leela. She never had to deal with anything like this."

There was silence for a moment.

Then Fry said, "Of course she did. Like when she met her parents."

"What? What do you mean?"

"Well, she came back to the office that night. She spent the entire day down there talking to them. And when she got to the office, she was all glum and everything. I was like, 'Leela, what is it?' And she goes, 'Eeh, nothing.'

"Well, she was obviously needing to talk about it, but she was just all quiet, like she is sometimes. So I get her a cup of coffee, and we settle on the couch, and she's like, 'Man, I really owe you a big one.' And I'm like, 'All I did was put the cup in the coffee maker.'

"And she goes, 'No, for... for coming down there. I mean... if you'd... if you'd been there just a half second later...'

"So I said, 'It's not important.' And she goes, 'Come on, Fry. You of all people know how much bullshit that is. I mean, if you hadn't fallen out of your chair, you'd never be here with us. You know, sometimes... sometimes a fraction of a second does matter.'

"And you know what I thought about then?"

I shook my head.

"Well, there were a whole bunch of times when Leela and I _almost_ kissed."

I said, "Yeah. She told me."

"She did?"

"Yeah. She told me about some of those times."

"What did she say about them?"

"She was talking once about you, and she was all like, 'I mean, I know it would never work out. Just look at him. I can't even talk to him without him making some stupidly suggestive remark.' And then I said, 'Well, he can't talk to you without you telling him to straighten up, or correcting his grammar.'"

Fry said, "Well, that's the thing. It wasn't like that at all when we finally did get together. I mean, I still made the stupidly suggestive remarks, but she just didn't get mad at them. And I tried even harder to do my job right. You know, so she wouldn't yell at me."

"Yeah. So anyway, then she said, 'But there've been times when, just for a second, that doesn't matter. You know? Like I don't see the uncoordinated moron I usually see in him. He just looks like this sweet, hopeless romantic. But then next thing I know, that's gone and he looks like the same immature 20th century kid.' And then she just says, 'If that hopeless romantic was there all the time, we'd be fucking in five different positions every night.'"

We both laughed a little. Then after a moment, he went on, "I guess I'm saying, don't obsess over what you've done. I did, whenever she shot me down. I'd sit up in bed agonising over all the stupid things I said to her. It didn't help. Just, you know, think about what you'll do differently next time."

After we cleaned up the plates, he said to me, "Oh, you know what? There's a Leela Fund meeting tomorrow night. Want to go?"

"Leela Fund?"

"Yeah. The Turanga Leela Memorial Scholarship Fund. It would be great if you could help out."

"Where's the meeting?"

"Somewhere in the sewers. They gave me the address."

"You know how to get there?"

"I looked it up online."

I aksed him, "They have sewer maps online?"

"Yeah," he told me. "

* * *

Bender, Fry, and I got into work the next morning and had three deliveries to make. I aksed Choto where BW was.

"It's not feeling well today," she said. "I told it to stay in the hotel, but it said if it felt better, it would come in later today."

So I rounded up my posse and took off. The first delivery was a quick one to Triton.

"Triton," I scowled as we landed.

"What?" Fry aksed.

"Nothing."

"No, really, what is it?"

I sighed. "Triton's the name of Kif's new girlfriend."

"You jealous?" he said.

"_No_," I groaned. "Just pissed that she was hovering there, waiting to grab him on the rebound. That's not how it works."

"Well, maybe their species has different customs."

"Well, you know what else?"

"What?"

"She was calling him 'Kiffy'. I mean, that's what I called him."

"So? There aren't many affectionate terms you can really make out of 'Kif'."

"Yeah, but still, didn't you hate it whenever your girlfriend called you the same thing an ex did?"

He shrugged. "All the girlfriends I ever had just called me Fry."

He was right. When we started dating, after we broke up, and right to today, I've just called him Fry the whole time.

I said, "Well, that's sort of how you know you have a really special relationship. When you give each other different names."

"Well, I didn't need to. I know which one of my relationships was really special."

After a pause, he said, "Well, I'm going to go make the delivery."

He left the bridge, and then Bender entered, saying, "What up, babyface."

I stared at him. "Were there a lot of impurities in your beer this morning, or what?"

"What?" he aksed. "I'm just testing some new names for you guys. I'm also thinking about 'cashflash' for you."

"What about Fry?"

"Sparky."

"Sparky?"

"Yeah. Fits, doesn't it?"

"Bender, Fry hasn't been sparky at all ever since Leela's gone."

"Yeah, I know," he said pensively. "I miss the old Fry. I wanna go out and party with him like we used to."

"I don't think he'll ever be like he used to."

"Well, he is going through the stages of guilt. Only, you know, really slowly."

I looked up at him in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"He seems like he's in stage 118 right now. I'm way ahead of him. I'm in, like, stage 8,389. Oh... hang on...." He looked away for a second, and then turned back to me. "8,390."

"I thought there were, like, five stages."

"Well, I don't know about you biological things, but for us robots, there's 16,384. Fry's spending hours in each stage."

"But he's a human. He doesn't go through the robot stages."

"Amy, pay attention," he said as he sat down in his chair and leaned toward me. "To first order, Fry's behaviour can be approximated by your standard die casting unit. Didn't you ever wonder why he and I get along so well? It's because we can treat each other as equals, just like die casting units and plainly superior bending units can treat each other as equals."

Just then Fry came back in.

"Hey bro," Bender said. "How'd it go?"

"Eeh, nothing special happened."

We stopped briefly at the Planet Express building to see if BW was back. It wasn't, so I grabbed the other two packages and started back toward the _Leela_.

Then Hermes called, "Amy, do ya have a minute?"

"Yeah."

I handed the shipments to Fry and followed Hermes into his office.

He aksed me, "Do ya want to take some time off?"

"Time off? What for?"

"I thought ya might want to go to your father's trial."

"Well... I'm not sure if I'm ready to go just yet."

"Right. I just wanted to make sure ya know dat if you want to, you can."

"Can... can I bring Fry?"

"Fry?"

"Yeah. I need him around."

He aksed, "But who's going to make de deliveries?"

"BW and Bender could."

"By demselves? I don't think so."

"Why not?" I said. "BW's got a pilot's license. And you let Fry and Bender make all those deliveries by themselves."

"Well, I'll think about it."

"Okay."

When I got back to the bridge and took off, Fry aksed, "What was that all about?"

I turned to him. "Fry?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to go with me to Mars later this week?"

"For the trial?"

"Yeah," I told him. "Hermes said I could take time off to go. I aksed if you could come too, but he hasn't decided yet. So if he says yes, will you come?"

"Sure. When?"

"I don't know. Maybe Wednesday or Thursday."

The two deliveries took up the rest of the day. When we got back that night, Hermes was waiting for us.

"So how did it go?" he aksed.

"Pretty uneventful," I answered.

"Did you hear de news?"

"What?"

"Your father entered his plea today."

"Hm." I wasn't interested; the important part of the trial would be later in the week, when the DAs would be trying to show how Uncle Marcus could have changed the records. No doubt they would also try to find a motive; I hadn't been able to think of one, at least.

But then Hermes said, "He pled guilty."

"Wh... what? Guilty?"

He nodded. "De sentencing's tomorrow."

That was when it finally struck me. _My father's going to die_, I thought.

Fry's hands went onto my shoulders.

Hermes aksed me, "Do you want to go?"

"Tomorrow?"

"Yes."

I looked back at Fry. He just shrugged, as though telling me it was up to me.

"I don't know."

"Well, let me know if ya decide to go. You and Fry can take de rest of de week off if ya need it."

"Both of us?" Fry aksed.

"Yeah."

Still in stunned silence, I sat at the conference table.

Hermes said, "I'm sorry, Amy."

I nodded. I was still deep in thought.

Why would he enter a guilty plea?

He might not have been able to make a plea bargain, but at the very least, forcing the case to go to trial would have meant anything could happen. Maybe some key piece of evidence was gathered inappropriately and it would have to be thrown out. Maybe you'd get some sympathetic jurors. Maybe there was some way to lighten the sentence by proving extenuating circumstances or something.

"Amy?"

I looked up and saw Fry sitting on the table next to me. He said, "You ready to go?"

"Yeah," I replied. "Where's Hermes?"

"He just left."

"He did?"

"Weren't you paying attention?" he aksed.

"I guess not."

"Well, he said to let him know when we go to Mars."

I said, "Yeah. I heard that part."

"We've got to hurry to the meeting," Fry said abruptly.

"What meeting?"

"The Leela Fund meeting?"

"Oh, right."

"How about you, Bender? Want to come?"

"Nah, I'll just stay here and keep a lookout," Bender said.

"For what?"

"You know. Stuff."

* * *

The meeting was in some sort of hotel conference room. As we entered, I said, "Why would they have a hotel in the sewers, anyway?"

Fry said, "Yeah, I aksed the same thing. Apparently a lot of mutants from other cities' sewers visit New New York."

The Turangas were there, of course. They introduced us to the others. Raoul, the guy with an extra arm on the side of his head, was there. He's the Supreme Mutant, their equivalent of a mayor. I also met the principals of Martin Luther Thing High and Curie Academy, their two high schools, as well as some teachers and a few other interested participants.

The meeting itself was kind of dull. Mostly they discussed some of the details of how they would select the winners. Fry was adamant that they not make leadership experience too important. Nobody really listened to him until he got up and said, "No, no. It just won't work like that. Remember what we're trying to do here. We're trying to find people like Leela. Aks yourself this: If this was 2993, and we were looking at an application from someone named Turanga Leela, how would you evaluate it?"

Mrs Turanga said, "That's true. She never had much of a chance to be a leader at the orphanarium."

Raoul aksed Fry, "Okay, well, what do you suggest?"

"I don't know," he answered. "That's where I need your help. What kinds of things are most likely to lead to success?"

That argument went on for some time, until Mr Turanga aksed us to move on to the subject of universities. He wondered if there was any way for them to reach a college outside Earth.

I said, "Kl'uh! Why not Mars?"

"Oh yeah," he said, "you went to Mars. Any way you could help there?"

"Of course. I'll check with my parents. We should be able to swing it."

That was the only topic all night that was resolved hastily.

* * *

When the two of us got home, Fry turned on the TV and started flipping through the channels, settling on a Martian news station. They were of course talking about Uncle Marcus. Meanwhile, I noticed I had sixteen messages. It became clear that they were all reporters seeking comment.

As I listened to the interminable string of requests for reactions, I looked back at the TV set. Across the ticker at the bottom of the screen ran the words: _LEO WONG'S WIDOW INEZ AND DAUGHTER AMY UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT_.

"Well, good night, Fry."

"You're going to bed?"

"Yeah. I don't really want to watch that."

"I guess you can hear it all from the source, right? Just talk to your father?"

"Well, I guess he's really my uncle."

"Oh. Yeah. Must be confusing for you."

"Yeah, well, I'll figure it out. Night."

"Good night, Amy."

* * *

"Morning, Amy."

"Hey, Leela."

We were in a wide plain covered with grass. The occasional bushes and trees sprang out from otherwise uninteresting places.

"Come on." She reached down for me, and I took her arm as I started to climb her tree.

We moved easily to higher and higher branches. Along the way I aksed her what type of tree it was.

"It's a pine."

"Never heard of that."

"Not surprising. They're extinct."

We continued on our way up. Finally, there were no more branches.

She said, "Bit of a shock about your father, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Sometimes I missed Uncle Marcus. Turned out he was there the whole time."

"So... did your mother know?"

"I don't know. I haven't talked to her."

"Why not?"

"Been busy."

"Not yesterday."

"What?"

"Could have called them yesterday."

"I guess."

The tree started to sway as the wind picked up.

"So... you cloned yourself."

"Not really. Not my body."

"Then what?"

"My mind."

She turned and looked at me skeptically. "So it's an organic mind... rendered in artificial hardware?"

"Yeah, sort of."

"You think that's wise?"

"Why? You think she'll try to escape or something?"

"No. But you saw her yesterday."

"What about her?"

"You saw how she missed Fry."

"Yeah?"

"Come on, Amy. Think about it. If you were trapped in a computer for an entire weekend, wouldn't you want to see the people you know?"

I thought about it.

She said, "That must be kind of odd. You know, having a virtual duplicate."

"Yeah. I just have to try not to get too used to talking to myself."

She smiled in amusement.

"But there's something wrong."

She looked at me, raising her eyebrow.

"I'm starting to get nervous every time we make a delivery. I just... I think something's going to happen to Fry. You know? I feel like he's going to... I don't know, fall off a cliff or get shot or something."

"Amy, will you listen to yourself? I mean, what do you have to go on? Just a feeling? That's not enough."

I looked down out of the tree. It was a long way to the ground.

"I'm just saying, there's a difference between being careful and freaking out," she added.

"How high up are we?"

"Want to find out?"

"What?"

In the next instant, she grabbed me around my waist and jumped off the branch. Green and blue cycled around us as we tumbled toward the ground.

I said, "Do you have rocket boots, or what?"

She smiled. "No."

I couldn't tell, but it looked like we were racing toward a lake or something.

Then I woke up.

* * *

I stayed in bed for some time. After all, I'd woken up at 05:40 or some weird time like that.

I might have drifted off a couple of times after that, but I was still curled up in bed, staring out the window, when I heard Fry.

"Amy? You up?"

"Yeah."

I rolled over to face him.

He aksed, "You want to go to the sentencing?"

"I probably should, shouldn't I?"

He shrugged. "It's up to you."

"When is it?"

"In, like, an hour."

"An hour?"

"Yeah, so we should really be going."

I said, "Yeah, we'd better go."

I jumped into the shower. It was about 07:10 then, so I figured the sentencing would be at eight. When I got out, I aksed if he knew where the courthouse was.

"No. I thought you'd know."

"Well, I only went there once."

"What for?"

"I was a graffiti artist in high school."

He seemed amused. "Really?"

"Yeah. Hang on, let me look up the directions."

I punched up the directions on my wrist, and then we went off on our way.

In the car, I continued the discussion. "A few of us would spray paint things on the school walls. I was working on a mural when I got caught."

"What kind of mural?"

"Well, everyone worked on it a little bit. It showed Mars, with a chain and a padlock around it. Then beneath that it said _Break free_."

"People must not have liked it on Mars, I guess."

"Not really," I agreed. "At that time it was kind of in trouble economically. I mean, other than my parents, nobody else really had a lot of money, and they didn't invest very much in the local economy. So a lot of people would graduate from high school and they couldn't get a job or anything. It was tough then."

"What's it like now?"

"It's still – oh crap! I was supposed to call Hermes!"

"I called him."

"You did?"

"Yeah. When you were showering."

"Oh. Thanks, Fry."

"Forget about it."

"So, yeah, some of the factories and mines that used to be there have been moving to other planets. Some people have blamed my family for hoarding wealth. They say it's turning Mars into a ghost planet."

"Hm."

"I read one article where someone thought my parents were trying to send property values down so that they could buy the entire planet."

"You think they are?"

"No. I mean, what can you really do with an entire planet that you can't do with half a planet? It just seems like... like my parents are bored with their wealth, you know?"

"Is that why your father pleaded guilty?"

I turned to Fry.

"It's easier than suicide," he said.

I murmured, "Maybe."

* * *

We landed in Jesburg, the Martian capital, to find the courthouse parking lot full. I parked on a street a few blocks away.

"What time is it now?" he aksed me.

"07:58. We'd better hurry."

"That's New New York time?"

"Yeah."

"What time is it here?"

Mars, of course, rotates slower than Earth does, so the day is about forty minutes longer. We divide it into hours and minutes like on Earth, with the extra minutes at the end. So the clock runs from 00:00 to 24:39, which explains why you'll never see any analog clocks on Mars. It also means that the time we call noon, 12:00, isn't exactly the middle of the day. But the time zones and the eccentricity of Mars's orbit have more to do with what time the Sun is at its highest, so nobody really cares.

After some wrist manipulating, I got the time in Isidis Planitia, where Jesburg is located. "11:52," I said.

"We still got some time. It's at noon local time."

For some reason I hadn't come to the logical conclusion, that they would not schedule it in New New York time.

In amongst all the TV cameras and reporters, I saw a cowboy hat. I sat next to the person who belonged to it. "Hey Mom."

"Amy!" She gave me a hug. "You just get here?"

"Yeah. Hi Dad."

He turned around. "Hey, you call me Marcus now. I not pretend no more."

"You working on wish list?" my mother aksed.

"What?" I said.

"You going to inherit everything. And you going on shopping spree right away, right?"

"But... what about you?"

"Yeah, I still control account after they get Marcus. But when I gone, it all yours."

"Well, that won't be for a while."

"Whatever."

After that, we did all the normal courtroom histrionics. Stand up, the honourable Judge Whoever, sit down. After the judge banged her gavel, she removed her glasses and eyed my uncle.

"Mister Wong. You will no doubt recall that yesterday you entered a guilty plea for the charge of identity theft. Martian criminal code states quite explicitly what will happen to someone who is convicted of this crime."

_Quit stringing us along_, I thought.

She went on, "It would be great if there was a little flexibility in there, since you've clearly shown contrition, and it's not as though you were hurting anyone. Nonetheless, you know what I'll have to do.

"Marcus Richard Wong, on behalf of the people of the Planet of Mars, I am sentencing you to death by brain and heart deactivation. Your sentence shall be carried out in two days, at 09:00 in this building, room 18. Adjourned."

* * *

Fry and I went back home that night. I'd spent much of the day talking to my parents, trying to get them to explain what happened. And once we got home, we found Bender waiting for us.

"What up fleshwads," he said. "Heard they're gonna send your uncle to the old scrap heap."

"Yeah."

"Well, lemme know if there's anything old Bender can do to cheer you up."

"Like what?"

That seemed to stump him. "Umm... well... you want a beer?"

"You'd give me one of your beers?"

"Of course. Not! Ha ha ha ha! Ohhhh! Bender, you are a kidder! Well, good night."

I couldn't find anything to watch, so Fry ended up finding a hockey game. I tried to keep awake, but I was just really tired, and I must have fallen asleep briefly at least once.

Fry said, "So... Amy."

"Hmmm?"

"Have you been having dreams?"

"About Leela?"

"Yeah."

"I've had a few dreams," I said.

"Like what?"

"Well, the first couple of nights, I had a couple where she told me to tell you what really happened."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Actually, most of them have been kind of like that. You know, we're just talking about what I'm going through, and she kinda gives me advice."

"What does she say?"

"One time, she said to keep an eye on you."

"Why?" he aksed. "Because that was her job?"

"Well, not like that. She was saying that, you know, you might be trying to keep your feelings inside. She was worried that might not be good for you."

"You know, I guess that's kinda true. Sometimes I do keep my feelings inside a little bit."

"So what are your feelings?"

He sat forward, looking down at the floor. "I think... I'm holding up better than I would have thought."

He saw the uncomprehending look I gave him, and he continued, "Well, I'd always known that something like this was possible. You know? I mean, we've had so many close calls and times when we could have been killed. It's sort of a shock, I think, that we even survived this long without something like this happening."

"I guess," I said.

Then he said, "I'm just..."

I looked up and aksed, "What?"

"I'm... just wondering how you're holding up."

"Me?"

"Yeah," he said. "Do you really think that I'm going to get killed soon?"

"I don't know. I just, well, I don't understand why all of this has to happen at once. You know? The way things are going, you'd be next."

"Maybe. But I never think about the way things are going. I try to think about the way things are going to go."

"Yeah, if you're thinking about anything at all."

He giggled and gave me a push. I pushed him back, and he got up and tried to pin me into the corner of the couch. I grabbed the pillow underneath me and used it to pop him on the side of the head.

That turned it into a full scale pillow fight. We hopped from one end of the room to the other, with Fry getting in more blows. I needed something to turn the bout around, so I suddenly leaped up and raced down the hallway into my bedroom. I emerged with two of my pillows. Big, overstuffed, broad, they would doom him to failure.

And they did, for a moment. I was pummelling him with attacks from my two pillows, forcing him into a corner, when he somehow twisted one of them out from my hand and then slipped between my legs. As I bent down trying to grab my pillow back, he hit me with it, right across the back of my head.

I was already off balance, and so that attack sent me sprawling across the floor. I raised my pillow to block whatever strikes were coming my way, but instead, Fry lowered himself down on top of me, putting a knee into my stomach. He said simply, "Admit defeat!"

"Never!" I countered.

"Oh. Okay then." He got up and settled on the couch. After a moment, I got up and joined him there.

* * *

After I went off to bed that night, I found myself staring at one of the boxes full of stuff we collected from Leela's apartment.

In amongst the blernsball scorecards, bills, and electronic components, there was also a small notebook, with worn corners and creased pages.

I sat down on the corner of my bed and started to read.

* * *

I woke up to find Fry running his fingers through my hair. He was lying next to me on my bed.

"Morning," he said.

"Hey." I looked at him, but then something struck me. "Oh god. Did..."

"What?"

"Did we... you know..."

"Have sex?" he aksed incredulously. "No! Of course not."

Once I started paying attention to what was going on around me, I realised that he was right. First, we were lying on top of the undisturbed covers. Second, my clothes were still arranged neatly on my body, with no bra straps or anything showing. And third, I still had the notebook in my hand.

"You want to go back to Mars today?" he aksed me.

"Yeah. What time is it now?"

"It's, like, 09:15 or so."

"What time is it in Isidis?"

"I'unno," he responded.

According to my wrist, it was 12:30 there.

"Little over twenty one hours," I said to myself.

This time, the flight was more quiet. Fry was watching the traffic around us, but at one point, he reached out and held onto my right hand.

We flew over the Tharsis mountains on our way to my parents' ranch in Arcadia Planitia, a couple thousand kilometres north of Olympus Mons. I tripped and fell out of the car, in slow motion.

"Yeah, I always forget about the low gravity here," Fry said.

"That's because all the buildings have artificial gravity," I told him.

"Yeah, I don't like that. I would so want to be in low gravity. You know, put up a thirty foot basket and dunk on it. That would be great."

"We have a thirty foot basket."

"What? You do? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"I dunno. You were only here a couple of times."

So we all played two on two. Fry was thoroughly disappointed to find that he could only jump a metre up. None of us could do much better, of course, and so we lowered the basket to the regulation ten feet. We changed the teams around a couple of times, and Fry and my mother made the best team. Fry had a tendency to attempt things that I knew he couldn't possibly do, like reverse dunks and halfcourt shots.

That, and he narrated his possessions, which could be kind of annoying.

* * *

I couldn't sleep that night. Probably a combination of the time change and the dread.

In any case, I pulled the blanket off the bed and headed for downstairs. But on the way I saw that Fry's light was still on. I knocked, and he looked up.

"Hey Amy. You warm enough there?"

He pointed at the blanket, which I'd wrapped around myself.

I aksed him, "Can I come in?"

"Sure."

I saw that he had the notebook from Leela's desk. He put it aside as I sat down next to him on the bed. He opened the drapes, and the sunlight came flooding in. It was about 10:00 there, eight hours ahead of Isidis. But my parents had decided to change to Isidis time this week.

"Amy?"

"Yeah?"

He said, "What happened?"

"Hm?"

"I think you said you were there when your father died?"

"Yeah. You want to know what happened?"

He nodded.

I told him the story.

"I was about four. This is, like, the earliest thing that I can remember. Uncle Marcus visited the ranch every once in a while, and I don't really remember any of those. I just remember how happy I was to see him, and how he'd let me ride on the tractor.

"So there was one night when I was awake and staring out the window, and I see the tractor go by. So I ran outside and hopped into the cab, and I shouted, 'Hi Uncle Marcus!' So he looks over, and he goes, 'Amy? What you doing –' And then we crash.

"It turned out that we were heading right for one of the stables, and one of the beams smashed right through the cab. My father, who was actually the one in there instead of Uncle Marcus, was killed right away. And some piece of débris sliced into my skull and went right into my brain, right here."

I lifted up the hair at the back of my scalp, although I figured Fry wouldn't really be able to see the scar. He didn't say anything for a moment, but he just looked at the back of my head.

I continued, "And that also happens to be why I keep saying _skr'uh_ and stuff like that."

"Why's that?" he aksed.

"Apparently the speech centre is back there. The doctors said that the shrapnel caused limited damage in there, but it was still enough to cause something that they called consonant substitution syndrome. If I say it normally, like _duh_, nothing happens. But if I emphasise it like an exclamation, like _bl'uh_, then the letters get changed. And it all happens subconsciously, so it doesn't even matter what I try to say."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"So you try to say _duh_, and _g'uh_ comes out?"

"Yeah. Were you wondering about that?"

"I kinda figured it was a Martian thing," he said.

"Nope."

We watched the buggalos graze outside.

He said, "So... how come your uncle's been filling in for your father?"

"Well, I talked to my mother and my uncle yesterday. Apparently the three of them all agreed to it in advance."

He seemed just as surprised as I had been. "They did? Really?"

"Yeah. They said my father had been going through some rough times. Depression and stuff. He told them he was contemplating suicide, but he didn't want to leave me without a father. So he tried therapy, antidepressants. Nothing helped. Finally they decided to... you know, to help him do it."

Fry said, "They don't have suicide booths on Mars?"

"No. And I think they didn't want the authorities to get anywhere near the body. You know? It happened here, so we got the family doctor down here to sign the death certificate. Handled everything internally, so nobody could aks questions."

"So they planned the whole thing out ahead of time?"

"Yeah. I mean, nobody could tell Dad and Marcus apart anyway. I thought I could, but apparently not. They figured they could get away with it, and they did. Until now, anyway."

"But... why would your uncle have to take your father's place? I mean, couldn't your uncle help raise you without having to pretend he's your father?"

I answered, "Yeah. That's what I aksed them."

"What'd they say?"

"They told me they wanted everything to be as normal for me as it possibly could. They said they didn't want me to have to grow up with a _de facto_ dad. They wanted me to have a real dad."

"But he's not your real dad."

"Well, nobody knew any better."

"What about your uncle? Seems like he decided to turn himself in if he ever got caught."

"Yeah. He said they figured nobody would catch on until I was grown up."

I leaned back on Fry's bed and started tapping the sheets.

"So do they do it?"

I started to giggle. After I'd cleared that from my system, I said, "I aksed them that, actually. They said they do."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. My mother was all, 'Your father was a better lay than your uncle, though,' and I was like, 'Whoa! Hey! I don't need to hear that!' So, of course, now all I can think of is my parents doing it. _Eeyugh_."

Fry spread himself out on the bed next to me.

"So I've been looking through this book," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. There's, well, there's a lot of stuff in here."

"I know. I read some of it."

"You know what really surprised me?"

"What?"

He picked up the notebook and started to flip through it, holding it over his head. Then he said, "Here it is," and handed it to me.

It was a page I hadn't seen before.

In the upper left hand corner, in Leela's handwriting, read _Leela Fry_.

Beneath that, _Turanga Leela Fry_.

In the upper right hand corner, _Fry Leela_.

Other things were written all over the rest of the page.

_Turanga-Fry Leela_.

_Mr and Mrs Philip J Fry_.

_Phil and Leela Fry_.

_Philip and Leela Fry_.

_Philip J and T Leela Fry_.

_Leela Turanga-Fry_.

_Turanga-Fry Leela_ again.

"I like that one," I said, pointing to _Turanga Leela Fry_.

"I liked _Turanga-Fry Leela_," Fry said.

Noting that it occurred on that page three times, I added, "Guess she did too."

"But I think it would have been better if she didn't change her name. Turanga Leela. That's a great name. Throwing Fry in there just doesn't work, you know?"

"Maybe. You didn't want her to change her name?"

"Well, it'd be up to her, of course. But you know what I woulda wanted?"

I shook my head.

"If she kept her name, and I changed mine."

"What? You mean get rid of Fry? What would we call you?"

"No, I'd keep Fry. I'd be Turanga Philip Fry."

I kind of liked it.

Then Fry said, "I saw something else interesting in here too."

"What?"

He flipped back a few pages, into a section filled with sketches. He stopped on one.

"Yeah, I saw that one," I said.

It showed him lying on the ground, her kneeling over him, her back showing, her hand holding his. The space bee's stinger could be seen sticking out of his chest.

Beneath that, she had written the words _Second chance_.

"When she came out of the coma," he explained, "she said, 'Fry, you're alive'. And before she went into it, the last thing she saw must have been the bee stinging me. So I think that in those last few seconds before she lost consciousness, she must have thought I'd gotten killed."

I looked at the caption again. _Second chance_.

I said to Fry, "You know, after you started going out, I aksed her what made her change her mind. She said she'd always been waiting for you to finish growing up, but then she was like, 'But I always had this tiny feeling that if we did start dating, maybe that would make him feel a little more responsibility. So, I guess I finally took that chance.'"

"Think that's what that means?"

"Looks like it. You know, she thought she'd lost that chance, and then she got it back when it turned out you were still alive."

"Yeah. Well, that's one thing she was bad at."

"What is?"

He looked over at me, saying, "Taking chances."

* * *

"Well, here we are."

"Yeah."

"You ready?"

"No."

"Well, I ready. Been ready a long time."

"Yeah. I know."

"Hey, why you so down? You going to inherit! You be rich!"

"I _am_ rich. And besides, Mom's still around."

"Well, she not be around one day. You take care of her till then, okay?"

"Of course."

"Mr Wong? We're ready for you."

"That my cue."

"Okay."

I hugged him.

"I'll miss you, Uncle Marcus."

"I miss you, Amy."

He hugged my mother.

"I miss you too, Inez. Take care of Amy."

She nodded. She hadn't said a thing since we left the ranch.

"I ready now."

"You're ready?"

"Yeah."

"This way, please."

* * *

Fry, my mother, and I sat in the viewing gallery of room 18 at the courthouse.

The room was sparsely decorated. A large clock was mounted high on the front wall, with a plain wooden chair underneath that. We were sitting in a row of similar chairs, with another row behind us. Those chairs were all occupied by reporters with notepads or television cameras. There weren't any windows anywhere.

In a moment, the guards walked out with my uncle. When I went to courtrooms on Earth, I noticed that they tended to use handcuffs and shackles and stuff, something that Martian authorities don't bother with. People who have to make court appearances are implanted with tracking devices. If you don't show up back at the courthouse when you're supposed to, it injects a tranquiliser into your bloodstream, and they come get you.

My uncle didn't have any restraints. The guards just flanked him as he sat on a couch.

They went through a bunch of formalities. Reading the charges, checking his identity, things of that nature. Finally, they said, "Mr Wong, we will now inject this fluid into your body. It contains nanites that will deactivate your heart and brain, thus terminating you. Do you have any last words before we proceed?"

He said, "No. Give me the stuff."

"Very well. Proceed."

They injected him, and then a curtain slid across the room. After a few moments, the guy emerged to make the announcement. "Marcus Richard Wong is deceased. Time of death, 09:06."

My mother released her grip on my right hand. Still showing no expression, she got up and walked out of the room.

"Mom?" I aksed. "Where are you going?"

I turned to Fry. He was still holding on to my left hand.

Then a _pow_ emerged from the hallway, like maybe a transformer blowing.

Immediately, Fry shoved me to the floor.

I said, "What was that?"

He answered, "A gunshot."

I was only familiar with the modern types of weaponry: lasers, blasters, photon beams. I had only passing familiarity with the older types of projectile weapons, in which a bullet was fired out of a gun barrel. A few of these were mounted on the walls of the ranch.

I could only guess that such guns would make loud bangs when they fired their bullets.

In a moment, Fry got up and said, "Wait here. I'll go see what it was."

The reporters and broadcasters were giving one another perplexed looks.

A couple of minutes later, Fry came back into the room. He looked down at me.

"Um... Amy? I... I think you should see this."

"What?"

I got up and took his hand. He led me out into the hallway.

I don't even know how I reacted when I saw my mother's body. Was I crying? Screaming? Staring helplessly? I don't know.

She was spread across the floor, with a gun in one hand. The handle was made up of something that looked like pearl, and there was a cylinder at the top that looked like the place where you would load the bullets. Smoke, predictably, emanated from the barrel.

As Fry wrapped his arms around me, I buried my face in his jacket.

I could faintly hear conundrum around us. I think the cops were trying to seal off the scene and clear the reporters out.

But all I could think about was what she'd said in the morning: "This all going to be yours soon, you know."

Of course I wanted it. Everybody wants the inheritance from their parents, large or small.

But I don't want it this soon.


	6. Wednesday 18 July 3004: Crumble

_My Ship, sixth part: Crumble_

by Deb H

* * *

**Wednesday 18 July 3004**

**_Recording begins 17:03_**

Okay. Well, testing, one, two.

There aren't any lights or anything on here, so I don't know if I'm actually recording. But, well, that doesn't really matter any more, does it?

Anyway, my name's Amy Wong, and this message is for Philip J Fry.

If he's alive.

If not, then, well, my will contains instructions on what to do in that case.

Well, anyway, this message is just my last chance to talk to you, Fry. I'm sure I don't have much longer left, and as you probably know by now, as soon as I inherited everything from my parents, I wrote up my will.

It's all yours, Fry. That shouldn't surprise you.

There are some things I want you to do, Fry, but first, I just... there are some things I've got to talk about first.

You probably know that I've been trapped in one of the collapsed buildings outside Jenningsville. You must have found my body if you're listening to this.

I've been down here for, I don't know, a week at least. Maybe even ten days. There's no sunlight down here. Not even a sliver. And we've got those short days anyway.

I guess I'm in pretty good shape, if you don't count the starvation and the dehydration. I haven't been able to use my right arm the whole time – it's trapped under the rubble, and so are my legs. Chances are at least one of those limbs is broken, but at least we've got those medical nanites in our bodies. Otherwise they probably would have gangrened by now.

It's been days since I've had any water. Some rainwater seeped in here a few days ago, and I was able to move my head enough to catch a stream dripping from above. A couple of times, I was able to catch bugs, but that's all I've had to eat this whole time.

And my wrist communicator probably got crushed under there. Otherwise you would have found my signal a long time ago.

So that's what it's like for me. Can't see, can't talk to anyone, can't eat, can't drink, can't move.

But I've been thinking a lot. Thinking and dreaming.

Fry, or whoever's listening, if you haven't found it already, you should look for my journal. It's a little notebook, white cover, that I used to write in. It's probably in my bedroom at the ranch, or maybe in my apartment back on Earth.

I wrote a lot in there when Leela died, and for about a month after that, up to when my parents died.

After that, of course, we just got so busy. But if you want to know how I was feeling then, you should read that.

And one thing I want to talk about now is everything that's happened since then. Because a lot has been going on and, well, maybe my recollections will be of some use to someone else.

Anyway, after I wrote that last entry, I just remember crawling in bed and curling up under the covers. I didn't want to get out of there for anything. I was thinking about having to run the Buggalo Group, cleaning out the ranch house, moving out of New New York, quitting Planet Express, everything.

But everything had been happening so fast. I just didn't know how to react.

And I remember how you got me out of bed, Fry.

If it is you, Fry.

Look, to make it easy, I'll just talk as though I'm talking to Fry. And if he's dead and somebody else is listening, then, well, sorry.

But if somebody else is listening and Fry's not dead, you'd better shut this fucking thing off right now and get it to him.

Anyway, if it's you, Fry, you probably remember when you came to my room and sat down on my bed. I didn't notice you at first. I was facing the other way. But I noticed when you put your hand on my shoulder.

By then I'd stopped crying. The well had just run dry.

When I looked up at you, you told me that the others were here.

I was like, "The others?"

And you were like, "Yeah. Bender's here. Clyde and Choto. BW. Hermes and his family. Everybody."

I said, "They all came?"

And you said, "Yeah, I invited them. I hope you don't mind."

Please. Of course I didn't mind.

I took a few minutes to clean up, and then you and I went downstairs. And, yeah, you were right. Everybody was there. They were all waiting for me, and they all had something kind to say.

Even Bender, sort of. When I said sorry to him for making him do all the deliveries that week without you or me, he was just like, "Ah, don't worry about it. You know, that BW's a lot of fun to be around. It and I really work well together."

And then later I was talking to BW, and it said, "I think Bender was kind of fucking with me. He'd tell me to get some part, but he wouldn't tell me where it was. So I had to look it up myself, figure out how to get it out, all of that, and of course, half the time it was an important part of the engine, so as soon as I pulled it out, the engine would shut down and we'd just be drifting in space."

And right after that, Fry, I told you, "Remind me not to put Bender in charge of the _Leela_ again."

And that's when you said something hugely important, Fry. Remember that? You aksed me if I was going to buy the _Leela_.

And I was just like, "Buy the _Leela_?"

And you said, "Yeah. I mean, Clyde owns Planet Express, right? And that includes the ship. So you could buy her from him."

So when I went over to Clyde, he just said, "Hi, boss."

I was like, "What?"

He just said, "Well, you're valued a few hundred times what I am now. I think our working relationship has changed."

In total, I inherited about a hundred billion dollars, including the company, the ranch, and my parents' other investments. So that would have made his net worth in the hundreds of millions.

I said to him, "Yeah, I wanted to talk about that."

And he said, "Well, first, I just want to say I'm sorry."

I was like, "It wasn't your fault."

But he said, "Well, that's the thing. It was my fault. I mean, it was because of our investigation that that got out. The client must have sent everything you found to the Martian cops."

I aksed him who the client was, but he just said, "Sorry, confidentiality. I can't even tell you."

He said he felt really bad that whole week, and he wanted to talk to me, but he didn't get the chance.

Then suddenly he was like, "You want to buy the company, don't you?"

And I said, "Yeah. How much do you want for it?"

And then he aksed for fifty million dollars.

Of course, right away I said, "You paid two million for it in the first place."

He was like, "All right, you caught me. Two and a half million."

I admitted that he was a good leader but pointed out that I'd be damned if the company had appreciated that much after just two weeks of his stewardship. Finally we agreed on the same purchase price as before, on the condition that he'd still run it and would get a modest raise. Then I told him that I wanted to keep making the deliveries.

He said, "You sure about that? In your position, I'm not sure you'd want to make risky trips every day. You've got a lot to lose."

I looked around the house, at the paintings of rustic Martian scenes, stuffed animal heads, and the old weaponry on the walls. One of those pieces of weaponry, of course, was still very firm in my mind.

And I said to Clyde, "Not as much as you'd think."

* * *

These last six months have been really rough. We lost Leela, and then my parents only a month after that. And since then I've been trying to get back to normal, but of course I spent so much time on the scholarships and everything. And then this whole war. 

But you've been there, Fry. You've been there the whole time. Even on my worst days, which have been often, you've been right here next to me.

I keep thinking about what you did that night after everyone went home. We found a closet for Bender to sleep in, which wasn't easy. Most of my parents' closets were the size of the Professor's lab.

You led me up to my room, and then we stopped outside the door.

I wanted to aks you in, but... well... somehow I just couldn't say it. Finally you just gave me a hug and said, "I'll see you in the morning."

I don't know if you noticed, but I kept standing there outside my door until you disappeared around the corner of the hallway.

When I finally went into my room, I got into bed... but I found myself just sitting there, back against the wall. I just sat there in the dark, I don't know how long.

You thought I was asleep. You tapped so lightly on the door, I almost didn't hear you. And I didn't want the light on, so I guided you to the bed by voice.

And Fry, you wouldn't have known, but as soon as you touched my hand, it was such a comfort to me. I finally had a chance to relax.

And I think that as soon as I relaxed and spread out across the bed, you settled in next to me.

At that moment, I was pretty damn vulnerable.

I mean, I actually wanted to have sex with you.

I know that was about the last thing on your mind. You wouldn't have wanted it, and it probably would have ruined our relationship. But that's how confused I was at that time. I was thinking all sorts of stupid things like that.

So Fry, one of the things I want to say before I go is just, thanks.

For understanding what I've done. For knowing what I've wanted all the time. Just for being willing to sleep in the same bed with me this whole time. It meant so much to me.

And I hope you are still alive, because with you in charge, I know my family's assets will be in good hands. I don't think there's anybody else I'd trust as much as you.

And if I can suggest something to you, just, you know, make sure you keep Hermes around. He is... he's so fucking useful.

I mean, so much shit today is driven by bureaucracy, and having an insider like him, well, it just makes everything easier. He was telling me once that it could have taken weeks or months to get me access to my inheritance. He got it done in, like, three days.

Like I said, I left everything I've got to you, Fry. I know it seems like a lot to handle, but Hermes understands it. He's been helping me out with everything. Running the company, taxes, the scholarship fund, all of that.

And there's the software me, too. She's got a fix on all of that too, and she's done all sorts of models and simulations and stuff. I can't even begin to understand all of that. She's obviously spent a shitload of time studying finances and economics and whatever.

You're the only person who knows about her, and I think you've got to keep it that way. I mean, can you imagine if that technology got into the wrong hands?

Actually, that's probably true of most of the Professor's inventions.

* * *

You know, I'm not in as much pain as I would have expected. I can't feel anything in my legs or in my right arm, except for this weird numbness that creeps in every once in a while. 

I can't feel anything real, I mean.

I've had a lot of conversations these last few days, mostly with Leela. A few with my parents.

And then some with you, Fry.

That's why I'm so... nervous? Anxious?

No, a lot worse than that.

Anyway, whenever I have those conversations, I can always feel Leela's hand, or your hand, or my mother's hand, holding my right hand.

And the strange part is, those conversations always feel so normal at the time. Like, Leela and I have talked about movies, about music, about Remi, all sorts of stuff like that.

And it's not until a lot later that I actually remember that she's... that she's dead.

I remember the first time I had one of those talks with you, Fry.

I think it was right before I fell asleep, and I guess it could have been a dream. But I'm pretty sure that none of those talks were dreams. They just didn't feel like any of the dreams I was having about Leela before I got stuck down here.

After I woke up, that talk we had started to come back to me. The first thing I remembered was the warmth of your hand in mine.

I mean, it's been pretty cold and damp down here. But your hand felt so warm. It's too bad it was just a phantom sensation.

As my brain cleared up, I could remember some of the things that we'd talked about. We'd talked about blernsball, the scholarship fund, things like that.

I said to myself that I was finally getting new cast members. All of my previous conversations were with... you know... people I'd killed.

And then I thought about that.

If I'd only been talking to people I'd killed, and then Fry, I was saying to myself, doesn't that mean that Fry is...

I keep coming back to that thought.

If you are alive, Fry, I hope you'll be able to get over all this. I mean, I know you weren't in love with me, but we have had a special friendship. I hope you'll never forget that.

And if you're not alive... well... maybe it's just as well that I'm about to die too.

* * *

I talked to Leela a lot that week she was going out with you. I don't know if guys talk about every detail of their dates like girls do, but she and I were talking about everything. 

To be honest, Fry, I was amazed at what she said about the sex.

Because when we were dating, well, it wasn't quite like that.

Don't take this the wrong way or anything, but you weren't the best I've ever had. You're probably not in my top ten, actually.

In terms of sex, I mean. Counting the whole relationship, you're in first place by a huge margin.

It's just that when we had sex, it wasn't that great as sex goes. You probably know that old saying about sex being like pizza – even if it's bad, it's still pretty good. It wasn't quite like that, but it's just that, you know, I have had better.

Anyway, sometime that week you and Bender went to get, I don't know, glue or something, and so Leela and I were sitting in the hangar talking about you and her.

And she said, "I just love the way he wakes me up."

And I was like, "Yeah? What's that?"

She said, "Well, Monday morning, I wake up, and I feel something down below. Something light, soft, but then suddenly it's something a lot more intense. And so I start to curl my legs and turn over, and I hear this sharp 'Ow!' from under the sheets. So I lift up the sheets, and he's under there holding his head. I'd kneed him in the side of his head! I mean, he's lucky I didn't hurt him. He could have bit his tongue. I just felt so stupid."

So I said, "You felt stupid? That's a first."

And she was just like, "Yeah. Whatever. Anyway, he did that this morning too, with more success."

Then she aksed me, "Have you ever had anyone do that to you?"

I told her I hadn't, and she said, "You'll like it. Trust me. I just hope we don't break up. No way in hell I'm going back to alarm clocks."

I aksed her, "Do you think you will?"

She was like, "What?"

And I said, "Break up?"

And she was like, "Why? You want him to wake you up like that?"

And I was like, "No. I want Kif to wake me up like that."

She laughed a little, but then she said, "No, I don't think we'll break up. I mean, he obviously cares so much for me, and, well, I like being with him too. It's just so far ahead of any other relationship I've ever been in. I'm... I'm wondering why I didn't give him a chance earlier."

And then I said to her, "So, have you set a date yet?"

She just looked up at me and said, "Yeah, you're real funny."

She blew it off, yeah, but there was something about the look she gave me. Something that said she was thinking about marriage.

Fry, I know you kept saying you wanted her to say it, that she loved you. But things like that, that's how I know that she did. The way she held your hand at the conference table. The way she smiled at you when she was flying the ship. The way she stared at you when you left the room.

And besides that, I kept bugging her to tell you. And of course, there would have been one easy way for her to make me stop nagging her like that, and that was to tell me that she wasn't in love with you.

You know why she never said that?

Because it wasn't true.

I mean, really, how much more proof do you need?

* * *

I hope the scholarship program goes well. The money we've got invested in it so far should keep it going indefinitely. And hopefully there'll be no shortage of candidates. 

I mean, I was blown away by the field this year. There are some great students in there. I hope they all turn out like Leela, but, you know, even if we only get one really good one in a century, it'll still be worth it.

And Remi's been outstanding so far. She hasn't even started college yet. I had to keep reminding myself of that.

I know you weren't involved with the construction of the clinic, Fry, but I was, and it seemed like a breeze. Everything was running smoothly. All of that started with her.

One night there was actually some down time, and so I got a chance to talk to her. You've probably talked to her more than me, and so you might know all of this.

The first time I saw her, I thought she was kind of cute, for a mutant at least. I mean, let's be honest. The mutants are great people and everything, but some of them are nasty as hell.

But I kind of like the way Remi looks. I mean, she looks like a big cat, like a panther or something. She's even got the ears, and the nose, and the black fur. And those little paws are just so adorable. It's too bad the extra pairs of legs ruin it. At least for me.

Anyway, we talked a little bit about how things went that day. And then I aksed her about her parents.

She was all like, "I don't know what the hell's wrong with them. Whenever I go upstairs to study, they're always like, 'You sure you don't want to go to the driving range tonight?' I don't like anything they like, and they don't like anything I like. I think they read one too many of those self help books about parenting. I just want them to leave me alone."

And I said to her, "Yeah. I was like that too."

Then she said to me, "You miss them?"

I said, "Yeah."

And she said, "Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. If something like that happened to them, I'd miss them too. It's just, you know, right now I want them to keep their distance. I won't be like that when I have kids."

I aksed her what she would be like, and she said, "I don't know. I'd make more of an effort to try to understand them. People tend to dismiss the way their children feel, you know? Especially at our age."

I decided not to point out the six year gap between us.

Anyway, she said, "Everyone makes such a fuss about experience, and yeah, that's important. But young people can also make valuable contributions, I think. Because they haven't gotten settled yet. Because their minds work differently. They haven't decided on some of the paths, some of the methods that old people have."

Then I aksed her, "So are you going to become a child psychologist?"

And she was like, "I don't know. Maybe. I mean, I'm definitely thinking about med school after college. As far as what I'll study there, it's still a long way off. I'll just think about undergrad for now."

And I said, "Yeah, sometimes you don't want to think too far ahead."

She was like, "What do you mean?"

And I said, "Well, look at Leela. She absolutely had to plan ahead. She couldn't live for the moment at all. I mean, one time we went bowling. She took so long standing there at the lane before she bowled, and finally I aksed her what the hell she was doing. And she said something like, 'Well, I want to make sure I leave a good arrangement for the next ball. Because I know I like, never roll strikes. And I don't want to leave splits all the time. So I've got to try to take down as many as I can on one side.'"

Well, Remi stared at me for a sec, and then she said, "She was like that? Really?"

And I was like, "Yeah."

She goes, "No kidding?"

And I said, "Yeah. She was. Haven't you heard that about her?"

She said, "Yeah, of course I have. I just figured it was an exaggeration."

And I said, "Well, that's the thing about her. You can't exaggerate anything about her."

Then she said to me, "Can't exaggerate? Why not?"

I said, "Well, look at her life. Born in the sewers to mutant parents, left at an orphanarium, graduates and gets a job, which she ditches based upon the advice of a guy she's barely met, gets a new job that she has no prior experience for, somehow ends up incredibly good at it, and gets killed just as she's finally falling for that guy she worked with for years. I mean, you couldn't come up with a more farfetched story."

And then there was another pause, and Remi said, "You really liked her."

I was like, "Yeah. Of course I did."

So she got up, and she aksed if I wanted to stop at her place. I agreed, and so she turned around toward the exit, but then she just stopped. And after a second she looked over her shoulder at me and said, "Well, come on. Get on."

Of course, I was just like, "What?"

And she said, "I'll give you a ride."

And I was all like, "I can't ride you."

And she was like, "Sure you can. Everybody does."

But I hesitated some more, until finally she was like, "Look, just get on. We'll talk about it on the way."

So I mounted her.

As she ran off toward her trailer, she started to explain it.

She said, "Look, every one of us is different in some way. And everybody's good at something. Well, some mutants are more different than others, and some are good at something that's more obvious than others. Like, you wouldn't aks me to lift a crate if Moose is around, and you wouldn't have him carry someone if I'm around."

So then we got to her trailer, and I climbed down off her. As we went inside, I noticed that she didn't seem to show any signs of fatigue. No heavy breathing, no sweating, nothing. And she'd been running pretty damn fast.

I aksed her about that, and she was just like, "Yeah. You see what I mean? I can carry, like, two or three people without breaking a sweat. So why wouldn't you take advantage of that?"

You know, that did kind of make sense. They seem to be big on making sure people do what they're best at. Kind of like the whole thing about the career chips.

Except, you know, it works.

If you haven't been inside her trailer, Fry, it's pretty funny. She's really only got one room, and one side is covered in cushions and pillows and stuff. Then she's got a kitchen on the other side. But you won't find any chairs, which puzzled me for a moment until I turned to look at her body again.

She said, "Have a seat," when we got inside.

I settled in on the cushions, and she threw her backpack aside before she started to pull some pots and dishes from the cupboards. She aksed me, "Got any plans for dinner?"

I told her I didn't, and so she said, "I'm grilling some squid. Want some?"

So I ended up having dinner with her. Her boyfriend was working late at the town that night. Although since you were working with him, you probably remember that night.

As she was cooking, I aksed her if she thought they would be able to secede. She told me, "Well, it's pretty easy to relinquish Earth citizenship, and, you know, Choto says once we do that, we can do whatever the hell we want. I think the big problem is going to be establishing diplomatic relations with other planets. Especially Earth, you know? They probably won't be too eager to invite an ambassador over."

I said, "So are we going to be, like, an independent planet?"

She was like, "I think that's the idea. I mean, I think we at least want to be affiliated with the DOOP, and once we've done that, you know, maybe we can try to push for mutants' rights back on Earth."

So I said, "What kind of flag would we have?"

She said, "I don't know. How about a purple one?"

Then I cut a couple of rolls in half and put them on the grill. I was kind of staring at the flames for a moment when I heard her say that it was ready.

She's a pretty good cook. I don't know whether she got that from her parents, or if she picked it up on her own, or what. But if you get a chance, you should have dinner with her.

Anyway, as we were eating, she suddenly said, "Wonder if we're going to have our own TV channel."

That thought kind of amused me, and I aksed her, "What would we have on?"

She was like, "I don't know. Local news, definitely. Maybe, like, home and gardening for mutants. Mutant game shows. Mutant sports. You know. Stuff like that."

When she finished, she put her plate aside and turned to me.

By the way, when I came into her trailer, I thought she had a hell of a lot of cushions, but she needs them all. The way she has to sit, she takes up quite a bit of space. But at least there were some left over for me.

Anyway, she said to me, "So... when we're done here... what are your plans?"

I was like, "Plans? For what?"

She said, "Well, I mean, you're probably not going to settle here, right? Are you going to live on Mars? Earth? What?"

I told her I didn't know, and she seemed to accept that.

Then she said, "It's just... well... I want to make sure you don't feel like you don't belong here. Because I think you would. And most of the people I know feel like that too. I mean, yeah, a lot of us resent the normals. But we resent them for locking us down in the sewers for so long. And, you know, you and Fry obviously aren't like that."

Actually, at that point I was already pretty sure I wanted to stay here on Epsilon Eridani 4.

And of course, now I'll die here too.

Anyway, she said, "Well, really, besides that, I also wanted to say thanks."

And I was like, "What for?"

She pointed to the corner, where her trophy was sitting.

She said, "I wish I had, like, a display case for it, or something."

I didn't think it looked right just sitting on the floor either.

Then she said to me, "You know, I still can't believe it sometimes. I'm really going to Mars University. I... do you know how much I've wanted to study outside the mutant community?"

I told her, "Well, you were the most deserving candidate."

She was like, "Yeah, that's the other thing I can't get over. I thought it was going to be either Roderick or Garel. When I got that call from you, I was just in total shock."

I said, "Yeah, that's what it sounded like."

She smiled a little bit and said, "Yeah, I bet I did sound like that. But really, why me? Why did you guys pick me?"

I told her, "Well, I wasn't on the selection board. But Fry told me that he saw a lot of Leela in you."

Tell her that yourself, Fry. You'll see her brighten.

I continued, "I mean, you're really smart. You're driven, you're motivated, you even have a little bit of a mean streak."

She was like, "I bet most other scholarships don't take that into account."

And I was like, "Well, the Leela Fund isn't your usual scholarship, is it?"

She smiled again, but I could see a little bit of nervousness building in her.

I aksed what it was, and she said, "Oh, nothing. It's just... well... I'm the first."

I was like, "Yeah?"

And she said, "So... you know... I've got this massive responsibility to succeed."

And I aksed, "What do you mean?"

When she picked up one of the cushions and held it tightly to her chest, suddenly she went back to looking like an insecure seventeen year old again, instead of the leader of a construction project.

She said, "Well, look. Right now the Leela Fund is known for one thing, Leela. And because of her, everyone attaches so much prestige to it. But before long, we're going to have another generation who won't know who she was. They'll see the whole thing differently. Whether or not they'll consider it as prestigious as we do, well, that's up to me. If Leela Scholars are successful individuals who make a difference and live up to the standards we're being held to, the Leela Fund will continue to be the biggest thing on this planet. The announcement every year will be a huge event, and everyone will be talking about it. But if I end up as, you know, some lackey somewhere, everybody will be like, 'What the hell's this?', you know? The whole thing will suffer. Nobody will be getting behind it. Just like, you know, Leela needed your support and Fry's support. Well, the Leela Fund needs the people's support. And I'm the one who has to earn it."

As I was listening to her, I had one thought. So I told it to her.

I said, "That's exactly why we want you."

She was like, "What are you talking about?"

And I told her, "Look, Leela had such high expectations for everyone, especially herself. That's something else you've got in common with her. You've got high standards for the program, and for yourself. People will recognise that. No matter how you end up, if you continue to work hard like you are, if you fight for what you believe in, people will respond to that and treat you with respect."

But she shook her head and said, "You will, but most of the people I know are telling me to study politics. They want me to end up as supreme mutant someday. Either that or some lifesaving surgeon. I can't let them all down."

We were quiet for a moment. Then she said, "Can I aks you something, Amy?"

And I was like, "Sure."

She aksed, "What do people think of you on Mars?"

I was like, "What do you mean?"

She said, "Well, you're the most important person on Mars, right? If you moved to another planet, wouldn't that affect the planet's economy? I mean, how many people on Mars make a living from your company?"

I told her, "At least ten percent."

And she was like, "You see? Is that planet really sustainable on its own? Without you around to keep pumping cash in, Mars's economy might collapse. How do people feel about that?"

I said, "I don't know. I never really paid that much attention to what was going on on Mars. It just never felt like my planet, you know? Everything there seemed to be connected to my parents in some way. At least on Earth I could kind of start from scratch."

Then she said, "So... do you feel responsible for Mars's economy?"

And I had to think about that one.

I mean, Mars is a big planet. It can take care of itself.

Well, that's what it seems like.

But maybe she's right about that. If we ever shut down the buggalo ranch, what would Martians do for a living? Tourism? Mars isn't a big tourist draw, I think.

Finally I said, "Well, nobody put me in charge of Mars's economy. My responsibilities now are to this planet, and to the Buggalo Group."

But she said, "I wish I could shirk responsibility like that."

I was like, "I'm not shirking it. It's really not my job. You can't expect me to do everything like that."

She said, "Yeah. I guess you're right."

* * *

Leela's holding my hand now. 

It's just another one of those phantom sensations I've been getting in my right hand, the one trapped under the débris.

But it does feel like her hand. I can actually feel the rough palm, the chipped fingernails, and even a little cut on the side of her thumb.

And the engagement ring on her finger.

Fry, I don't know if you still have dreams about her. I do, though.

I don't have them very often, but when I do, they just seem to be getting more and more fucked up.

I had one where I had my entire arm in her.

Well, it wasn't as nasty as it sounds.

Or, I don't know, Fry. Maybe you don't think it's nasty. Maybe it turns you on. Nothing wrong with that.

Anyway, well, this was a dream that I had not long after we moved out here. We'd just started building the clinic, and you'd just started in Jenningsville. That day had been a long one – it was when some of the materials had been damaged on the way in, and Remi had to get us all together to try to fix them.

So, in the dream, I was standing in the mess hall of the ship. I think I might have been reading a magazine or something. Leela walked in and said, "There you are. I was looking for you."

So I said, "What for?"

She said, "Can you come with me for a sec?"

I said okay, and she led me up to her quarters.

By the way, Fry, I know we haven't used her old quarters for anything yet. But it doesn't really make sense to have a whole empty room on there, so I was thinking, you know, maybe you could turn it into a gym or something. You know, if you want to.

I think she would have liked that.

Anyway, we went up to her quarters, and then she took me into her washroom. She said, "I just really need a bath." And she turned on the faucet.

You're probably aksing yourself if there was a bathtub in her washroom that you've forgotten about.

No, there's no tub in there. Didn't stop me from dreaming about it, though.

The bathtub was huge. It was, like, the size of her entire cabin. And somehow it was still contained within her washroom. Not that it makes any sense or anything, but like she said in one of my other dreams, it's a dream. It doesn't have to make sense.

She started to take off her boots, and then she aksed me, "How's the water? Is it too hot or anything?"

I put a hand in, and then I said to her, "No, it's fine."

And when I looked back at her, she'd already taken off all her clothes. She had her scrunchie out, too.

I don't know about you, Fry, but I always thought her purple pubic hair was funny.

Actually, you only got to see it that last week, I guess. And maybe on a few other occasions.

Anyway, she stepped into the tub and eased herself into the water. It looked like she thought it was hot, but it had been okay to me.

Then she turned to me and said, "Just going to stand and watch?"

She pulled the drawstring on my pants, and they just fell right down.

I'd been wearing my pink sweatsuit. You know, like I used to wear all the time. And I had my hair up, in the style that I always had it back when I was wearing that pink outfit. And my skin tone was tanned again.

So I ended up taking off the rest of my clothes and sliding into the water next to her.

She stretched out for a bit before she said to me, "Are you building a planet?"

I was like, "Yeah. Basically."

She said, "From scratch?"

I said, "Almost. There are those old buildings still left."

And she said, "Left from what?"

I said, "There used to be a city here. They moved out a hundred years ago or so."

She aksed me, "Who's 'they'?"

And I told her, "There were some settlers here. They were probably from Earth."

She said, "Humans?"

I said, "Yeah."

She was like, "Why did they settle here?"

I said, "They had a mine a few kilometres out of town."

She aksed, "What were they mining?"

So I said, "Dysprosium, I think. Something like that."

She said, "Dysprosium?"

I said, "Yeah."

She said, "Explains why they moved out."

And I was like, "It does?"

She said to me, "Yeah. About that time they discovered a system over in the Scutum Arm. Has, like, these big asteroids made almost completely out of dysprosium. Bottom fell out of the dysprosium market, like, overnight."

And you know what's weird?

I looked it up. There is a system in the Scutum Arm that has asteroids that are, like, eighty percent dysprosium. And it was discovered around 2900.

How the hell would I have known that?

Anyway, then she said, "I hope your economy isn't based on a dysprosium mine."

And I was like, "No, we're building a clinic."

And then she just gave me this funny look.

I said, "Well, there are some really good mutant doctors."

And she said, "But a clinic? Is that really going to pull in money?"

I told her, "We think it is. Choto has been running the numbers. She figured we could do it if we become, like, a war clinic."

She was like, "A war clinic?"

I said, "Yeah."

And she said, "Define?"

I was like, "Well, at any time there are, like, five or six different wars going on around the galaxy. Choto figures that if some of the governments involved are willing to pay an annual fee for, I guess it's kind of a membership, then we'd treat any of their wounded soldiers."

She was like, "Yeah, but wars! There can be a lot of casualties. Can you treat all of them?"

I said, "Choto seems to think so. She said she went back over the statistics from some of the wars going on now. There were only, like, a couple of days over the past two years where there would have been too many patients for us. And even when that happens, we could refer the less serious ones to other facilities."

And Leela said, "What about the governments? Do you really expect them to sign up to something like that?"

I said, "Yeah. Choto figured that out too. She says we could charge them less than they pay for their own health care and still make enough to sustain the planet."

She was like, "But would they agree to that? That's basically outsourcing your entire medical industry. Aren't their doctors going to complain?"

I was like, "Choto says a lot of the planets that are fighting wars now have understaffed civilian hospitals. Military doctors could go there. And we'd have to hire some of them anyway so that we'd have experts on their species."

Then she said, "Yeah, that's another thing. What makes you think mutant doctors would be qualified to treat whichever species happens to be fighting wars?"

I said, "I don't know. But a lot of them have been studying exophysiology for a while now, like, years before we ever came up with this idea. They've never had a chance to practise it. Unless you count on their patients. And look at some of the mutants. They almost have exophysiologies themselves."

She started to laugh. Then we both stretched out across the tub. She rolled over and put her hands on the rim. She rested her chin on her hands and then turned to me.

She said, "Do you buy Choto's figures?"

I was like, "Well, yeah. She wouldn't lie. Especially about something like this."

And then Leela said, "Yeah, but are you sure she hasn't made a mistake?"

That had honestly never crossed my mind.

And it's a good thing I had that dream, because, Fry, you probably remember that day I called Hermes in to look over Choto's work. He caught some errors. Important ones. I mean, with the original fee amount, we wouldn't have broken even.

But then suddenly she was like, "So whose idea was this, anyway?"

I said, "What? The clinic, or liberating the mutants?"

She acted all surprised about that. She was like, "You're liberating the mutants now? Building a clinic isn't enough for you? How are you liberating the mutants?"

And I said, "Well, you know how things have been for them. They're banned from the surface. Repressed. Unrepresented. They're vilified if normals ever see them. They didn't have anything to look forward to."

Then she said, "So you just decided to 'liberate' them?"

I told her, "Yeah. Well, Fry came up with the idea. He thought they needed a planet of their own. He said that was the only way they could get a fair shake. And they agreed with him."

She aksed, "So what about the clinic? Where does that fit in?"

I said, "Choto and I worked it out. I'd met a lot of their doctors, and you know something? I was really impressed with their abilities. I watched a surgery on a little baby boy with a malformed heart. I mean, that sort of thing would have been fatal back in Fry's time. And normals, we just genetically engineer them out. But all they have is surgery, and they're so good at it. They said that sort of thing is routine for them. So I aksed them if they could do that sort of thing for others. They told me about what they'd been studying. And then Choto put together her plan. I think it'll work."

Then she said, "Well, just, you know, keep an eye out. Earth might not be all that happy to let you guys declare independence."

I said, "Yeah. I know."

She went on, "You might have to start treating casualties earlier than you wanted."

Just like so many of my other dreams about her, she was exactly right.

But then she said, "But there are some people missing."

So I said, "Yeah, a lot of them are going to stay back on Earth. Especially the older ones. It's their home and everything. I was kind of hoping your parents would come, but they don't want to leave."

She was like, "Yeah. I know. They told me they lived in that house ever since they got married. They said I was born there. Don't think they'll ever move out."

The air in the washroom started to feel cold. I sank a little further into the water, letting the warm waves wash over my breasts.

After a moment, Leela rolled over onto her back and took my hand. She brought it down between her legs and pushed my fingers into her.

I looked up at her, all surprised. She just leaned over and kissed me.

I don't know what kissing her felt like to you, Fry. I just hope it was worth everything you went through to get there.

Anyway, to me, it was actually sort of like kissing a guy. Her lips were rough, sometimes chapped, like a guy's. And the colour contrasted so much with her pale skin, it looked like she was always wearing lipstick, even though she never did. She had a girl's smooth face, but I usually associate that with smooth, lipsticked lips.

I bet I sound like a complete bisexual. But I've never really thought about it like that. I mean, yeah, I've done it with girls, but that sort of thing is common these days. It's just that I always expected to settle down with a guy. For a while now, I've been hoping that it would be you, but you obviously haven't been ready for that.

But that time when I kissed her, it was a little different. Still no lipstick, but I hardly ever wear lipstick either. Her lips were much smoother, though. Much softer. If they'd been like that all the time, I might have found her irresistible.

Anyway, she just kept moving my fingers, and I focussed on those feelings. In fact, before I knew it, I opened my eyes, and all I could see was my shoulder, and then her legs. I looked up and saw the sweetest smile on her face, kind of like when she stared at you. Her eye was shut, and she was biting her lip.

I woke up right after that.

* * *

There are still a few other things I wanted to talk about, Fry. Like the scholarship program. 

You don't really know anybody at Mars University, other than Professor Farnsworth, so it'll be kind of hard for you to work that end of it. The president there is new. She's an electrical engineering professor, and she's been on the faculty for a while, so she's got the trust of a lot of people there. So she'll be a good friend to have.

She was kind of reluctant to approve the program. But what she likes about it is the way it raises the prestige of Mars U in the mutants' eyes. That, and the money we're paying for it, of course.

And the good thing about it is that the applicants have a pretty good chance at being accepted to Mars U, even the ones who don't win the scholarship. I guess none of this year's applicants will be going there besides Remi, but make sure you let them know every year that the school might still accept them even if they don't end up winning the scholarship.

By the way, you and I talked about this already, but talking about the Mars U president makes me think of something else.

The first time I met with her, I had on my old outfit, with my old hairstyle. And during that whole meeting, I felt kind of... well... self conscious.

She didn't say anything about what I was wearing. It was just the way I felt. I thought that, well, I didn't have the right appearance for someone in my position.

I don't know if you'll understand what I mean, but I just felt like it was time for a change.

When you were in the shower that one morning, I was sitting in front of the mirror, just trying out hairstyles. I tried tying it all into a little ponytail. I tried brushing it back. I tried parting it. I even tried a bun, which looked as gl'orky as it sounds.

In the end I just let it all hang down and had the cutbot shorten it to just above chin level, and I think that's when you came out of the shower and saw me.

It's not like I did it just for you, but I was really hoping you would like it. I just didn't count on you not noticing it.

Remember that? I said to you, "So... what do you think?"

And you were just like, "About what?"

And I was like, "My hair, moron."

And you said, "Oh, yeah, I guess it is different, isn't it?"

Actually, now that I think about it, you were just messing with me, weren't you?

You told me, "I think I liked it before."

I said, "But that was when I was trying to be cute."

And you aksed me, "You don't want to be cute any more?"

I was like, "No. I think the cute me is dead. She died when my parents did."

You said, "Really?"

And I said, "Or maybe when Leela did. Well, maybe that put the cute me into a coma, and then the plug got pulled when my parents died."

You said, "Yeah. That's kinda what happened with the stupid me."

And then I couldn't resist saying, "No, the stupid you is still standing right there."

You were like, "Oh yeah, you're right. I forgot."

I always liked the way you could handle jokes like that, Fry. You never took yourself too seriously.

Anyway, after that was when we got rid of all my pink sweatsuits. I just felt like I couldn't wear them any longer.

But you were the one who suggested that we give them to the mutants.

I wasn't sure if there were any who could wear them. I figured there was a chance that one of them was the same size as me.

But there were those two sisters, and then that one other girl that we saw. You probably remember the sisters. They came up to us once when we were going to a meeting, and they said, "Hey! Miss Wong! We just wanted to say, thanks so much! These are, like, the best outfits! We're the coolest kids in school!"

And I was just like, "Well, thank Fry. It was his idea to give them to you."

They were just going on and on about it, about how their classmates had started to treat them differently. And I guess those clothes were a lot different than the beaten, worn, threadbare stuff that most mutants wear.

I don't know about you, but that was when I really started to get a sense of how much they wanted stuff, really anything, from the surface.

And maybe that's how you got the idea to get them a surface of their own.

Anyway, talking about my clothes, I never really got a chance to explain my shirt to you, did I?

We haven't talked about it. Maybe the symbolism was just that obvious, but if you didn't figure out what my shirt meant, Fry, I guess I'll just tell you now.

I like the cargo pants because of all the pockets. I've had to carry around a lot of stuff lately, and I always hated purses. Cargo pants are way better. When I first started to wear them, the only pair I had was olive green. So that's why all the pairs I have now are that colour.

And I don't really like tight pants, so I always let them hang loose. So, they tended to ride low and show my panties. You might have liked that, but really, I didn't care if people were seeing my panties. What the hell difference would it make, anyway?

The shirts I've been wearing are programmable. I could put different designs on them if I wanted, but I wound up putting the same thing on all of them.

They're black, for obvious reasons. You might have thought it was odd that I was still wearing shirts that expose my midriff, after what I said about not wanting to be cute any more. But I just like it that way. And it's not like it's that cute with cargo pants anyway.

There's those four thin horizontal stripes running across, just above chest level. With the small number four on the front and the bigger one on the back, you might have thought it was some team's jersey. I put in those numbers to make it look like that, but that's not it.

The number means the four of us, and so do the stripes. The top one's pink, for me. Then the purple one, for Leela. Then the red one for you, and the silver one for Bender.

I even gave some thought to the order. You and Leela are next to each other, of course. Bender's next to you, and then I'm next to Leela.

Actually... you know what I just thought about?

It's funny. I've worn those shirts for a few months now, and I only realised this just now.

That's the order we'd be standing in – _were_ standing in – at your wedding.

Bender on one side as your best manbot, then you and her, and then me as her maid of honour.

* * *

Fry... you and I have spent a lot of time together, especially lately. But there are a few moments that really stand out. 

One of them was when I woke up after Zoidberg put your head on my body. I was freaking out about that, because I knew there was a big chance of something going wrong. I mean, they don't do that kind of operation every day.

That, and, well, it was Zoidberg doing the operation.

But I came to, and I saw you breathing, so it seemed like it had gone okay.

And, to be honest, I would have done that even if we weren't going out at the time. I knew how you felt about Leela – everybody did, except for her – and so I was treating our relationship as just, you know, a chance for regular sex.

Then I started to fall in love with you.

The thing was, it didn't stop after we broke up. I'm not even sure it stopped when I started dating Kif.

But you probably know all that by now anyway.

Anyway, there were some other moments I remember. Like seeing you trudge down the steps of the ship after you guys blew up those chronotons, in even deeper despair than when you left.

The two of you walking into the conference room that Monday morning, holding hands. And Hermes staring at you guys and then saying, "Attention, everyone. Dis meeting's postponed on account of de Jamaican fruit bats dat have obviously settled into me Jamaican fruit belfry."

You listening for her heartbeat.

You, standing over her casket, telling us to demand the best from ourselves.

You giving Remi the trophy.

I really like the trophy. When Jeanette sketched it out, I don't think I really got a good sense of it. Someone else drew another sketch, and then I started to see what it was.

We talked a lot about the shape of the column. We were going back and forth for a while, between circular, elliptical, and rectangular. But then we started to make prototypes, and then someone decided to make a star shaped column.

And then I'm not really sure why I volunteered to make the calls. I think it was mostly because of all the time you guys had spent choosing her. I mean, I think it made sense. You were responsible for picking the winner. I was responsible for notifying her.

I called the other seven finalists first. Some of them were more disappointed. Roderick, especially. It seemed like he thought he was going to win. But he took it well. I mean, he recognised that all of them were great candidates. Hell, I don't even know how you guys made that decision.

So I told the other seven the same thing, how they weren't the winners, and I couldn't tell them who was the winner.

Finally, I got Remi on the line.

She was lying across the floor of her room. She had a pair of headphones around her neck and a magazine in her hand. Basically, she looked like any other teenager.

She said, "Hey, Amy. How's the meeting? Have they adjourned for the day?"

I was like, "Yeah, they have."

She said, "That's good. Thought they'd keep going all night."

So I said, "Remi, they've made the decision. They chose you."

She just said, "Yeah. Whatever. How much longer, really?"

And then I told her, "I'm serious, Remi. They chose you. You're the first Turanga Leela Scholar."

You know Fry, at first I didn't understand why you didn't want to have a formal announcement. You said you wanted the winner to be able to prepare an acceptance speech and all that, but I didn't agree with that.

But seeing everyone's reactions, I think you were right. I think it does make more sense to notify them in private.

Anyway, after I told Remi, she was just staring at me. She was like, "You... you mean it? Me?"

I said, "Yeah. Fry just told me."

She started to shake her head a little bit. She said, "Wh... why?"

I told her, "You know they can't talk about that. Everyone on the committee is destroying their notes right now."

She was sitting up now, just staring at me.

So I went on, "We'll come by tomorrow and get your signatures on all the forms, okay?"

She was just like, "Yeah, okay. Yeah."

And I said, "Remi?"

She said, "Yeah?"

I said, "Congratulations, Remi."

She said, "Oh. Yeah. Right. Right. Ummm... thanks."

She was a lot more coherent the next day, when we brought the forms for her. After you took them back to Hermes, I stayed and talked with her a bit more. Finally I aksed her, "So do you have something to wear for the banquet?"

And suddenly she was like, "Oh, crap! I completely forgot! No, I don't have anything. I should aks Becky. She works at Robinsons-Mutant. I'll –"

Finally I was just like, "No, don't. I'll take care of it."

She tried to talk me out of it, but I didn't care. I made a call. It took me a couple of minutes to convince them that I was in fact who I said I was, but then they put me through to Gabbotna herself, from Dolce and Gabbotna.

She was like, "Hello Amy! I haven't had a chance to meet you in person yet, have I? They tell me you're very fond of my work?"

I said, "Yeah, that's true. That's kind of why I'm calling. I want to know if I can commission something from you."

She said, "Absolutely, darling! Anything for a sweet young checkbook enabled organism such as yourself! What is it you require?"

So I told her, "Well, a friend of mine needs a dress for this Saturday."

She aksed me, "So what kind of friend? Male or female?"

I sighed, "Female, of course."

And she said, "Hey, it never hurts to aks. The last time I malfunctioned and failed to aks that question, I ended up with a very unpleasant surprise. So, a dress for Saturday? Eminently doable."

And I said, "There's one other thing."

She was like, "What's that, buttercup?"

I said, "She's a mutant."

She aksed, "What, like in the sewer?"

I told her, "Yeah. That's where I'm calling you from, in fact."

And she said, "Okay, but is this dress going to a good home? I mean, if she's going to be traipsing around in radioactive sludge, I don't need to send it to a mutant. I can get my own radioactive sludge, you know, slop it all over the fabric, get people rolling around in... hey, you know what, that's a good idea for our ad campaign this fall."

Then we heard her shout to someone else, "Rach? Radioactive sludge this fall!... What do you mean why? You do not aks me why! When I say radioactive sludge, the only question I expect from you is 'What isotope?'! Am I understood?"

And then she said to us, "Now then, this is a mutant? What sort of a mutant?"

So I held out my wrist and pointed the camera at Remi. I aksed Gabbotna, "Can you see her?"

She answered, "Yes, I can. Hello, darling."

And Remi was like, "Hi. Can you really make me a dress?"

Gabbotna was like, "Can I make you a dress? What kind of question is that? Turn to the side, please?"

Remi turned, and Gabbotna aksed her, "Six legs, my kitten?"

Remi said, "Yeah. That's right."

I said, "Gabbotna, can we have you come down here? Remi's a mutant, so she can't go to your office."

She was like, "Yes, yes, I know all about the plight of mutants. I don't understand the humans' disgust with them at all. I must say, there's nothing repulsive about you at all, my oversized purring device."

I saw Remi blush a little bit.

Gabbotna went on, "So can I come down and meet you tonight, get measurements, find out what you want, all of that?"

So Gabbotna came to the Rolurra house that night.

I met her down there, and as I walked in, she shouted at me, "Amy, darling! So wonderful to finally meet you!" And she gave me that fake kiss on each cheek, that thing models and designers do.

Do real people ever do that? Or is it just people in the fashion industry?

Well, whatever, she brought me in and told me, "I just finished taking our sweet little Remi's measurements. She's 191-91-102-74-293-38-88-97. I know what you're thinking about that hip measurement, and no, it's only because of all the legs. Now then, colour. Every woman, of course, needs her little black dress, so they say. But of course, the women they say that about don't have black fur already. So, we do different things. You might want black dress anyway. But this occasion, I was thinking red. That's just what I think. What about you?"

Remi seemed like she was caught by surprise at that pause. She said to Gabbotna, "Well, um, yeah. Red. Or maybe, like, purple?"

Gabbotna sounded kind of intrigued. "Purple. Like dark purple? Yes, with your fur, something like dark purple. With a shine? Yes, hang on. One moment please."

She sat down and pulled a laptop out of her briefcase. She started typing and then projected a purple dress onto Remi's body. It had a faint, satiny shine to it. The clothes that Remi was wearing at the time were hidden.

She said, "Based on what I saw before, I took the liberty of creating a couple of mockups. Okay. So, we have some options here. Your... what do I call this?"

She was pointing to Remi's lower torso, the part that her back pairs of legs came off of.

Remi was just like, "I just call that my lower back."

And Gabbotna said, "Okay. Your lower back. Covered or uncovered?"

Remi was kind of shocked. "What, like nude? I can't go around like that!"

Gabbotna just said, "No, not completely nude. More like this."

She hit some more keys on the laptop. The projection changed to a different dress.

I liked this style. It was backless, and it also exposed the top of Remi's lower back. It had a couple of strips of fabric over the lower back to keep it on, and then it came up to cover her hindmost ass. Each pair of legs was skirted down to about midway between the knee and ankle.

Gabbotna said, "So we can do either this, or something more like this."

The projection changed again. It was almost exactly the same, but now her lower back was covered entirely.

Remi was trying to twist around to look at her own lower back. Finally Gabbotna noticed and turned on another projection on the other side of the room.

Remi straightened out and said, "Yeah, thanks."

She looked for another couple of minutes. Gabbotna flipped back and forth between the two choices until finally Remi settled on the uncovered style.

We went on like that for a while. Sometimes they aksed me what I thought. But I don't think they needed to, since usually I ended up agreeing with Remi.

They spent a lot of time on the legs. Remi wanted the skirts to dangle down more. She said, "You know, I want them to kind of trail a little bit. But I don't want them so long that I keep stepping on them, you know?"

And Gabbotna was like, "Okay, well, what about the back one? Can we have that one down to the ground?"

Remi was like, "Yeah, okay."

And they worked on it some more, and then they settled on the lengths of the others, about the same as before, down to about the middle of the shin.

They also spent some time on the front. Remi wanted it to plunge down, show a lot of cleavage, and then go all the way down to the navel. Gabbotna said, "Well, if we do it like that, it would never stay on without an adhesive."

Remi was like, "You mean like, I'd have to glue it on?"

Gabbotna said, "Yes. Basically."

So Remi said, "Is there, like, something we can do with the straps here instead?"

So Gabbotna tried adding a pair of crossed straps, starting at the top of the little flaps that covered each breast. They crossed each other and then merged with the shoulder straps.

Finally they turned to me.

I was like, "What?"

Gabbotna aksed me, "What do you think of this, Amy dear? Does it bring out our little Remi's natural beauty, or what?"

I got up from the couch and walked around her. And then I stood next to her for a while, just staring.

Finally I said, "You look like the centre of attention at the débutantes' ball."

And the banquet really did feel like a débutantes' ball, didn't it?

Well, one débutante, at least.

Gabbotna didn't charge me as much as I'd expected. I mean, that must have been a lot of work, piecing together that dress for such an unusual body in such short time. Not to mention the shoes. I didn't think sandals would even work for paws.

I bet she wanted to get in with me early, though. She was hoping to establish a relationship with me, hoping to become my preferred designer.

Which she probably would have been anyway, to be perfectly honest. I've always liked her work. A lot of the stuff in my eveningwear collection is hers.

Anyway, didn't Remi just look so stunning in that dress, with the earrings and necklace she borrowed from me, and the curled hair? I didn't think mutants could be that attractive.

Other than Leela, I mean.

I thought it was a good gesture to recognise the other finalists. I hope they'll all have their plaques hanging proudly in their dorm rooms.

But, of course, the trophy presentation was the most important part of the evening. I remember some of the things you said, Fry.

"What really got me about this whole thing was how difficult the decisions were. We got plenty of applicants, plenty of great applicants. Everyone who sent in their applications is a promising young individual, and you shouldn't feel discouraged at missing out to these people up here tonight. There's absolutely no shame in being runners up to these people. And we're looking forward to all your successes.

"That said, only one of you could be the winner. It's someone who... well, she may not feel like it, but in reality, she has accomplished a lot already. She's written some deep, invasive papers about relations between mutants and normals. She's helped upgrade school science lab equipment. She led the charge for bigger desks at Martin Luther Thing High..."

"During the selection process, people have aksed me: How can you replace Leela? And I say, that's just it. She is irreplaceable. But so is everybody. We all have a different combination of abilities, and shortcomings, and successes, and failures. And we all influence others. That, more than anything else, is what the Turanga Leela Scholarship is. The search for students who will influence others. That's what separated our eventual winner from the other finalists..."

"Well, now we've got a surprise for you. This is the part where I give the trophy, except I don't know what the trophy looks like. Only a few people here at Leela Park today actually know what the trophy looks like. I guess we'll all find out together, then. So, come on up here, Rolurra Remington. You're the inaugural recipient of the Turanga Leela Scholarship. Congratulations."

I was kind of nervous. I was afraid maybe people wouldn't like the design of the trophy. But it seemed like everybody did. I like the circular wooden base. Then there's the star shaped semitranslucent column, capped with the silver surface with TURANGA LEELA SCHOLAR, 3004, ROLURRA REMINGTON etched in it.

The whole thing is about thirty centimetres high, which might seem a little small. But we didn't want a huge trophy. We were more concerned with the details, like the silhouette of Leela inside the column. She looks a little different depending which panel you look through, but she's always staring kind of upward, and the little black stars and galaxies and nebulas at the top really seem to fit.

I may be wrong, Fry, but when you removed the cover, weren't you staring at the trophy for a bit before you remembered to give it to Remi?

She was staring at it, too. I guess that means we did a good job with the design.

I didn't know what to expect from her acceptance speech. I figured it would be sort of like a high school valedictorian's speech, or maybe like an award show speech. But it ended up reminding me more of a campaign speech.

She talked about a lot of high school stuff. Some of the things she did, some of the people she knew. Then she started to talk about how she wanted to make all the mutants proud.

You remember later, Fry, when you and I were talking with her and the Turangas? They said she'd already made the mutants proud.

Of course, she wants to do more than that. She's a little too critical of herself, I think. Maybe you're going to have to keep her goals realistic.

You're going to be really busy, aren't you? I mean, the company has a CEO, so you don't need to be concerned with that full time. But if you're also going to be spending a lot of time on the scholarship program, and at the clinic, and in the government, you're going to work yourself to death.

* * *

Fry... there was something else I haven't told you. 

A few weeks I went back to New New York to visit Planet Express. When we started building Epsilon Eridani 4, we stopped making the deliveries, of course. I got that new ship for BW and Bender to use on the deliveries, and then Professor Farnsworth and Cubert upgraded the engines.

So a couple of weeks after that, I went back there and had Clyde brief me. We were planning to do that every quarter. Whether you want to continue that, it's up to you.

I stayed kind of late that night. Just about everyone had gone home, and I was wandering around the darkened building when I found myself in the Professor's lab.

And standing on one of the benches was the What-If machine.

So, naturally, I did something I'd wanted to do for a while.

I sat down in front of it, pulled the microphone down toward me, and aksed it: "What if I could undo killing Leela?"

Here's what I saw.

* * *

I was sitting at the table in the Planet Express lounge with a cup of coffee, reading the newspaper. The sunlight coming through the window made it look like early morning. I was dressed in my old pink sweatsuit and had my old hairstyle. 

Cubert walked in, saying, "So what brings you in this early? The mall not open yet?"

I said, "Shut up, Cubert."

He sat down across from me and said, "Much as I'd like to take your advice, I think I'll decline. So what's biting you?"

I said, "Reality."

And he was like, "It bites all of us. What aspect of it is biting you?"

So I kind of shrugged and said, "Leela."

He said, "Yeah, it's not the same without her around. Fry and Bender used to be good for three stupid acts a day. Now they only do one and a half each week."

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. And then I said, "I just wish I could go back and keep all that from ever happening."

He looked up at me and said, "What's that?"

And I was like, "I said I wish I could keep it from happening."

Then suddenly he got up and told me to follow him. We went down to the lab, where he opened up one drawer and searched through it.

I was like, "The hell are you looking for?"

He held up a small red device and said, "This."

It was rectangular, about the right size to fit in your palm. It had a numeric keypad and a display above it, like an antique calculator.

I stared at it and aksed him, "What does this do?"

He was like, "It's a personal chronological reverser. It makes use of the activity of quantum foam to build a tunnel back to a desired time that you enter here."

I said, "So it's a time machine?"

He scoffed, "No, it's _not_ a time machine. That's obviously impossible."

I argued, "It's not impossible. Remember when they all went back in time?"

He was like, "It doesn't matter whether they did it. It's still impossible. But no, this isn't a time machine. It goes back and reconfigures the quantum state of your brain at a previous time to match your present state."

I was giving him a blank stare.

So he was like, "It means you can go back to where you were at some time and try again."

And I said, "So it's like an undo button?"

And he sighed and said, "Yes, it's like an undo button."

After I stared at it for a little longer, I aksed him, "You mean I can go back to when Leela died and stop her from getting shot?"

Of course, by _stop her from getting shot_, I meant _not shoot her_.

I mean, you have to understand, Fry. It just kills me to know what I did, to think that everything that's happening now is a direct result of me doing something stupid.

Sometimes the guilt just... it just suffocates me.

You know?

You probably don't. But there have been times when I've been sitting somewhere, or lying in bed, or talking to someone, when suddenly I just... I don't know... I just go numb. I can't move or say anything, and I even have trouble breathing.

And about the only thing I can do is think of her.

I had them a lot those first few weeks after she died. They haven't happened very much since we started on the clinic, but I did have one the day I got stuck down here.

Anyway, on the What-If machine, Cubert told me how it worked, how I should enter the amount of time that I wanted to go back.

I aksed if he'd tested it. He said, "No, I was going to test it on a lower life form. Lucky I found you."

Then suddenly he went "Oof!" and bent over out of the frame. He squeaked, "But on the other hand, your knee is a formidable weapon."

We tried to work out how much time it had been. He told me to set it back a little more than we really needed, just to be sure. I aksed him why.

He said, "Because there's no way to adjust it. Let's say you wind up going back to, like, a second after she dies. Then you can't do anything to stop it, obviously. And then you'd have to live through these past few weeks again until I finish inventing this and you have another chance."

I aksed him, "Wouldn't I still have this?"

He told me, "Of course not. It can only take your mind back. It would be impossible to take any objects back. So if you miss your chance, you'd have no choice but to live through all that again waiting for me to invent it again."

As I was watching this, I thought back to the flight home, having to tell her parents, the funeral, the fight against Robot Santa, New Year's, my father's execution.

The thought of doing all of that all over again would make me sick.

We ended up with an answer of 44 days and 12 hours, so that meant this would have taken place on the 26th of January.

After I entered the time, I sat there for a while just staring at the device.

I aksed Cubert, "What if it fails?"

He said, "Nothing major will happen."

I was like, "You're sure? There's no chance it would, like, kill me, or put me in somebody else's body, or leave me as some disembodied spirit somewhere, or something?"

And he said, "That is particularly impossible, of course. It would violate Blernoulli's Principle."

From my reaction, it looked like that didn't really reassure me.

Then, suddenly, I aksed him, "So what happens to you?"

He was like, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Well, what if I can keep Leela from dying? Won't that change this time?"

He said, "Yes, of course. That's the whole point."

And I said, "But won't everything just suddenly change for you, like in a time skip?"

He answered, "No. We'll all have lived through everything that happened as a result of your actions."

He drew something on the chalkboard, with a line branching off into two. One was supposed to be where Leela gets killed, one where she doesn't. He explained how if I succeeded, everything on our branch would never have happened at all, and only the branch where Leela's alive would remain.

But as I was watching, I had a question.

Cubert was standing there watching me. He would have seen me press the button. And then... what?

At first I thought that the Universe would suddenly change into whatever would have happened if Leela was alive. Like a time skip.

He said something different, something I'm not sure I get.

It seems like his past and his present would have changed. I mean, what the hell would that feel like?

Well, whatever. On the screen, after I was mostly satisfied with the response, I picked up the device again and put my thumb over the enter key.

I swallowed hard and said, "Here goes nothing."

And I pressed enter.

The picture cut to the bridge of the _Leela_. I guess it would have just been the Planet Express ship then.

I was sitting in the pilot's seat, and you were sitting on the couch, Fry, facing me.

I looked around for a sec, and then I looked down at my wrist. Checking the date, I guess.

And you were like, "What?"

I said, "What?"

You said, "You were saying, 'I think maybe I should...'"

I said, "Leela hasn't come back yet, has she?"

You were like, "No. How long did she say she'd be gone?"

I could see the relief on my face, as though I'd been dreading that you'd say she was dead.

So I told you, "Two hours, I think."

You aksed, "How long has it been?"

I said it had been about two and a half hours.

You said, "Maybe we should go look for her."

And I was like, "She'll turn up."

And after that I kind of leaned back in the chair, letting my arms hang behind me. Now the relief was obvious in my entire body.

And you were like, "What's with you? Usually you have to drink a lot more before you flop around like that."

So I lifted up my head, looked at you, and gave you a little smile. I just said, "What's with me? You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

And you shrugged, and you said, "Want some cookies? I'm gonna go get some cookies."

You got up and went down to the galley.

After you were gone, I looked at my wrist again, and then I whispered to myself, "It worked."

Anyway, then the What-If machine dissolved to us sitting on the couch, eating cookies. It was just starting to get light outside.

We were both smiling. I was saying, "Your heartbeats were synchronised? Awwww!"

But when my alarm went off, I started to look all apprehensive again.

You said, "Does that mean it's time to go again?"

And I was like, "Yeah, why don't you..."

But then I hesitated, and I ended up saying, "You know what? Wanna wait a few minutes?"

You were like, "Why? What for?"

I said, "I dunno. They might not get there until it's lighter out."

And you looked out the window, and you were like, "Yeah, good idea."

We talked a little bit more, and then I got the call.

It was Leela. She said, "Amy! I need your help!"

On the What-If machine, I looked like I was overcome with emotion.

And sitting in front of the What-If machine, I was overcome with emotion.

It was a simulation, of course. But it was still her voice.

A voice I hadn't heard for months.

On the What-If machine, I choked out, "Leela."

She answered, "I'm a couple of minutes from the ship, but I'm being chased. Get a weapon!" and then clicked off.

And you looked up at me and said, "What? What is it?"

I was just like, "Nothing. Come on, let's go."

I got the laser pistol, and then we both went down outside. We waited, and pretty soon she appeared over the hill.

You called out, "Leela!"

When you called again, she heard you and called back.

Then the guy jumped on her, and they started to fight.

And I got up and walked toward them.

You were like, "Amy, what are you doing?"

Then I started to run, and as I got nearer, I shouted, "Hey!"

They both looked up. I pointed the gun at the guy and said, "Get away from her!"

He got up and ran away.

Just like that.

Leela got up and said to me, "Hey, thanks. We ready to go?"

I stared at her for a minute. Then I grabbed her and gave her a hug. My sniffling was clearly audible.

Leela seemed confused. She looked up at you, and you just shrugged.

She was like, "Um, good to see you."

I said, "No, it's good to see you."

And you said, "I'm just gonna go deliver the package now."

Leela was like, "You haven't delivered it yet?"

You told her, "No, they weren't there the first time."

Then it dissolved to us taking off. All four of us were on the bridge, and Bender aksed when we'd get back.

Leela, who was flying, said, "Sometime around three."

He said, "All right. Means I'll be able to catch a naked poetry reading. You in, Fry?"

And you were like, "I don't know. Leela? Naked poetry?"

She said to you, "I kinda had something else planned for us tonight."

Bender was like, "Okay, but you skintubes don't know what you're missing." He got up and went downstairs.

Then Leela aksed me, "You gonna fly back?"

I said, "Um, okay."

She was like, "You said you would."

I was like, "I did?"

And she said, "Yeah, because Fry and I are going to be... otherwise occupied."

And suddenly you said, "Wooo!"

So then it dissolved to an exterior shot of the ship landing in the hangar. Then it cut to the interior of the hangar, with the four of us making our way down the steps. You and Leela were holding hands.

After Hermes took the clipboard back from you and went back to his office, we all walked outside in the dead of night. I turned to Leela and aksed her, "So, did you?"

And you said, "Yeah! We went twice!"

I said, "No, did you, you know, tell him?"

She was like, "Yeah. I told him." But she just said it so plainly, so emotionlessly.

And then you said, "Told me what?"

She said, "That I love you. Have you forgotten already?"

And then you gave her a sly little smile and you said, "I have forgotten. Can you say it again?"

And she pulled you in tight, put her arms around your shoulders, looked into your eyes, and she said, "I love you, Fry."

She kissed you for, well, it seemed like ages, and then she pulled away and added, "And I don't care who knows it."

You were like, "Really?"

She started to giggle. And then she pulled her head back and shouted into the sky, "Hey everybody! I'm in love with Fry!"

From the balcony above us, we heard the Professor yell back, "Love him quietly, you young ruffian!"

She shouted up to him, "I'll love him as loud as I want!"

And then water splashed down – on me.

I yelled, "Eyagh! Professor, you missed!"

And he answered, "I did nothing of the sort! And to prove it, I'm going back to bed!"

And shivering, I said, "I'm going home for some dry clothes."

Bender was like, "I'm going to the naked poetry. Last chance, you guys. Naked poetry?"

Leela said, "No. We're going to my place tonight. I've got poetry. And I think I can find some naked lying around."

And Bender said, "Whatever. Your loss."

You were staring at Leela, and you said, "No, it's not my loss."

And then there was a scene with the four of us, plus Kif, planning to fight back against the robot Santa Claus.

It was kind of a shock to see Kif there. I mean, I hadn't seen him since New Year's. I guess I'd forgotten that we still would have been together at that time.

And then there was a shot of the ship landing on Neptune. As Santa was loading his rocket sled, you went up behind him and shouted, "Hey Santa! Look! I'm being naughty!" And then you, I don't know, you malfunctioned your wardrobe or something.

And right then we hit him with the EMP guns.

He went down almost immediately, and you and I ran up to him. I was carrying a toolbox.

Leela said to us, "Hurry, you guys. He might come back on at any time."

We took off the bolts and pulled his head off slowly, carefully.

I started to reach inside. I guess I was looking for the EPROM.

Leela was standing behind us, a little way toward the ship. She said, "Careful. A lot of the switches in there are connected to the self destruct trigger."

Finally I said to you, "You want to try?"

You were like, "Sure." And you took the the screwdriver and the UV lamp, and you took a turn poking around inside. Then you said, "It's like Operation."

But you ended up giving them back to me, and I took another turn. I guess I found something, because I started to unscrew something. As I was unscrewing, it looked like my hand slipped.

Then Robot Santa exploded.

When the shrapnel finally stopped raining down, Leela got up and called out, "Fry? Amy?"

She crouched down and started to creep toward the flaming wreckage of his chassis. She had her arm up to shield herself from the heat.

She found my body first.

I was covered in blood and burn marks. She studied my body, just saying to herself, "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit," over and over again.

She really lost it when she found your body.

As soon as she got to you, she just collapsed to her knees. She checked your pulse, listened for your breath, tried to find your heartbeat. But finally she realised that there wasn't anything she could do.

She slumped forward and sobbed into your chest.

I almost couldn't watch it.

I mean, you know what she was like. She was always in control of herself. She always knew what to do.

But she looked like someone completely different.

Then I saw her hand settle on something. She reached into the charred remnants of your jacket.

She pulled out a tiny little black box.

And she opened it up.

It was the engagement ring you were going to give her, of course.

She rubbed some tears from her eye and looked down at you. She bent down and kissed you.

Then she took off her glove and put on the ring, just as she collapsed into tears again.

And then the What-If machine dissolved to the lounge. Leela was sitting at the table. There was a cup of coffee before her, but she wasn't touching it. She just held her arms to her body and stared straight ahead.

Then Cubert walked in. He said to her, "So, wearing that ring for a month hasn't brought him back from the dead. What were the odds of that?"

And she said, "Shut up, Cubert."

He sat down across from her and said, "Much as I'd like to take your advice, I think I'll decline. So what's biting you?"

She said, "Reality."

And he was like, "It bites all of us. What aspect of it is biting you?"

She looked over at him and sighed. She said to him, "Just went to the gynæcologist. I'm pregnant. I'm... I'm going to have Fry's kid."

And Cubert said, "Congratulations."

She started to smile. It seemed like it was a lot of effort for her.

And then Cubert sarcastically added, "We wouldn't want his special abilities flushed out of the gene pool."

And Leela said, "Fuck you. He cared about other people. That's one trait that never got to you."

He said to her, "Chill, okay? It's just a defense mechanism I use instead of having to show sympathy. Seriously though, it's been a month. Even you should be able to see that you've got to get on with your life."

She was like, "Yeah. It's just, things were going so well for me. I had two best friends. I mean, I'd never really had one best friend before. And then when I fell in love with Fry... he treated me like a princess. A goddess, even. I thought we'd be together for life. And, you know, if only one of them had died, at least I'd have the other. At least I'd still have one pair of shoulders to cry on. But..."

She leaned back. She was staring at the ceiling when she said, "I just wish I could go back and keep all that from ever happening."

He looked up and said, "What's that?"

And she was like, "I said I wish I could keep it all from happening."

He got up and told her to follow him.

And then the screen went dark.

* * *

I wasn't really sure what to make of that. 

I mean, yeah, things could have turned out worse than they did. But does that really mean that it was going to be either her or us?

I'm not willing to accept that.

I still think we could have taken out Santa Claus without killing anyone. We would have, if he hadn't kidnapped you.

But it doesn't matter any more.

The war matters. I wonder how it's been going since I've been trapped down here.

We really loaded up on weaponry when we declared independence. I think our defenses are solid. With the kind of weapons we got from the Professor, I couldn't see how they'd do anything to us.

It's just... we never expected the quake bomb.

But thanks to Kif, we had enough warning that you and I could get everyone to safety. In fact, I'm probably the only victim of it, unless Clara didn't make it either.

It doesn't seem like they used it again. I think I would have felt the vibrations.

I don't think I've heard much of anything down here. I guess the fighting has been going on someplace else.

It was only a few days after the independence declaration and the outbreak of fighting when they dropped it. I'm sure you remember it, Fry, just as much as I do.

We were both at the control trailer. I was on my way out of the bathroom when you called me.

I was pretty surprised to get back to the control room and see Kif on the line.

He said, "Hi, Amy."

I was like, "Um... hey."

And he said, "So, like I said, I've got something very important to tell you. It's about... well... you see, the President has just authorised a new weapon to be used against you."

You and I looked at each other. You aksed him, "What kind of weapon?"

And he told us, "It's called an earthquake bomb. They fired it not long ago, so it's going to strike you in about an hour."

And you aksed, "What's it do?"

He said, "Well, what it does, it sort of digs into the crust of the planet that it strikes. Then it sets off a huge earthquake, and the waves then travel across the planet and start more earthquakes, all around the planet."

You were like, "How strong?"

He said, "At least magnitude nine. But they could be much stronger than that. I don't know how earthquake resistant your buildings are..."

I said, "They're not. We thought this planet was geologically dead."

He was like, "It will be until the bomb strikes. But when it does, it could take down a lot of your buildings. Do you have, like, a shelter you can use?"

You said, "Yeah. There's one here, and then there's one under the clinic, right?"

And I was like, "Yeah. We should get everyone into one of those."

And you said, "Yeah, we should. Lt Kroker, how much time did you say we had?"

He told us, "It could be as little as fifty minutes."

But then you aksed him a question that I just hadn't thought of. You said, "So why are you telling us? I mean, you're supposed to be fighting against us. Couldn't you get court martialed?"

He was like, "Yes, but I'm pretty sure that this kind of weapon would violate the Gyvenna Conventions. I tried to talk Captain Brannigan out of launching it, but of course, his orders come straight from the President. So this is my only recourse."

You looked a little bit like you might not have believed him. Which makes sense, I guess. We were fighting a war, and generally in a war one side doesn't volunteer information to the other.

And right then, Raoul, who was standing by the radar screen, turned to us and called out, "I've got a blip heading for us. From Earth's direction, impact in about fifty two minutes."

Kif said, "That's probably it. It measures about two metres in diameter, four metres long. I've got to go. Good luck, you guys."

I said, "Kif... thanks."

And when Kif clicked off, Raoul told us, "It's one to two metres across. This must be the quake bomb."

You aksed, "When's it hit?"

Raoul was like, "Looks like fifty one minutes and... thirty seconds."

I said, "Do you know where it'll hit?"

He hit some buttons and told us, "At the moment, it looks like it'll hit somewhere in the Compton Sea. But it'll be a little longer until we get a good fix on its trajectory."

And you aksed him, "Well, are we at least sure it'll hit us?"

He said, "Yeah, it'll definitely hit."

You said, "Well, it doesn't matter where it hits. Kif said it'll start earthquakes all across the planet. So how long will it take to get everyone into the shelters?"

Raoul said, "Well, we still don't have the comlink to Jenningsville. So we'll have to send someone there to notify them."

And immediately I was like, "I'll go."

You aksed me, "Are you sure, Amy? We can send somebody else."

I said to you, "But I'm, like, the only one here who's been working on the clinic. So I know them all. I can make sure that everybody's accounted for."

You said, "Yeah, you're right. Better hurry. Take the hovercycle."

I said, "Okay. See you, Fry. See you guys."

I waved to everybody else and left.

I could have gotten there faster, but I was on the lookout for anyone who wouldn't have gotten the evacuation call otherwise. Luckily I didn't see anybody.

But I had to stop along the way. I had one of those... I told you I have those times when the guilt hits me.

Not really panic attacks. Guilt attacks, I guess.

At least you didn't have to see it.

See Leela dying, I mean.

It was like playing back your favourite scene from a movie. Except this was anything but my favourite scene.

Maybe I shouldn't be talking about guilt with you, Fry. I don't want you to feel like that about me. Someone had to go alert them, and you know I was the right person for the job. I just got unlucky. It didn't have anything to do with you.

Anyway, I got there and saw Remi immediately. As I jumped off, I called to her, "Hey, Rem!"

She called back, "Hey, Amy. How are you?"

As I ran up to her, I said, "We got to get everybody into the shelter, now."

She was like, "Why? What's happening?"

I said, "They launched a quake bomb at us. It hits in, like, forty minutes."

She said, "The fuck is a quake bomb?"

I told her, "It causes earthquakes all across the planet. Big earthquakes. It's probably going to take down half our buildings."

She said, "Shit. Are we sure the shelter's safe enough?"

I said, "Yeah. Look."

I had all the diagrams and everything on my wrist. So I showed her the specs for the shelter. It could take quakes up to magnitude thirteen, which is, like, ridiculous.

And then I aksed her, "Where is everybody now? Are they all here, or what?"

She told me, "Most of us are here. Moose and those guys are all down by the river."

I was like, "Is that everybody?"

She said, "Yeah, I think so."

I said, "Okay. You get everyone here into the shelter. I'll go and get the others."

So I hurried down to the river. Moose and the three guys he worked with were installing the sewage system. It wasn't until then that I finally thought of the irony of a bunch of mutants working on a sewage system.

When I got them back, everyone was milling around in the shelter. I aksed Vyolet where Remi was.

Vyolet told me that Remi had gone to look for Clint and Clara.

I aksed, "Are they the only ones missing?"

Vyolet said, "Yeah. We counted everybody else."

And I said, "Okay. Well, we'd better start to get ready here."

She aksed me, "How much time do we have?"

I said, "About eighteen minutes."

Just then Remi burst through the door and ran down the stairs. Clint followed after her.

Remi came up to us and said, "I can't find Clara. Are you sure you saw her go toward the dock?"

Vyolet said, "Yeah. She had her fishing pole and everything."

I was like, "Okay, well, we're running low on time. You two get everything set here. I'm going to go look for her."

And Remi actually got mad at that. She said, "No! Let me, Amy!"

I said to her, "Remi, they need you here."

She was like, "You'll never get there in time. I can be, like, all over that area in five minutes."

I said, "But I've got the hovercycle."

She said, "But what if you don't get back? I'll just go."

She started to leave, but I held her back and said, "Remi, stay here and get everyone ready for the quakes. That's an order."

Of course, we didn't really have a command structure, so saying that didn't mean anything. But Remi accepted it anyway. She just stepped back and said, "Yes, Amy."

Vyolet aksed, "So what if you don't get back? What do you want us to do?"

I said, "First, check the provisions. Make sure we have three days of food and water for everybody."

She was like, "You think we're going to have to stay down here that long?"

And I told her, "No. But we might."

She aksed, "So how long should we stay down here? Until the quakes stop?"

I said, "I don't know. There are probably going to be some aftershocks. So wait maybe, like, another hour or two, just to be sure."

Then Vyolet aksed, "What if the building collapses on top of us?"

I told her, "Well, the doors are on the outside, so that shouldn't be a problem. But if both of them are blocked, just, you know, try to ram though them."

Then I thought about it a little bit. I said, "No, you know what, I'll call Fry."

You answered, "Hey, Amy."

I said, "Hey. We've got everyone here in the shelter, except Clara. I'm gonna go look for her."

You were like, "Okay, but hurry. You've got twelve minutes."

I said, "Twelve? I thought we had sixteen."

You said, "No, it's coming in faster than we thought. It's supposed to hit at about 11:48."

And I told you, "Okay, well, I'm going to find Clara. Remi and Vyolet are in charge until I get back. And Fry?"

You said, "Yeah?"

I went on, "I'm going to have Remi meet you at the control trailer when everyone leaves the shelter. So if you don't see her, like, two hours after the quakes stop, come here to the shelter, just in case they're trapped inside. Got that?"

And you were like, "Yeah. Of course."

I aksed you, "Are you set there?"

You said, "Yep. Everyone's here, we're getting everything together. Call me when you find Clara, okay?"

I said, "Sure."

And you said, "Okay. See you."

I said, "Bye, Fry."

When I switched off, Remi aksed me, "So I'll go to the control trailer once we get everyone out?"

And I said, "Yeah. Give Fry a status report and all. Actually, I should give you my wrist communicator."

She said, "No, you keep it. You might get stuck out there when the quakes hit."

I said, "Okay. I'm going to – shit."

I checked my wrist, and we only had ten minutes.

Vyolet said, "Hurry. If you don't find her, get back here."

I was like, "Okay. See you guys."

As I went up the stairs, I could hear Remi talking to everyone. She was saying something like, "Okay folks, we've got, like, ten minutes. Like I told you, they've fired an earthquake bomb at us."

And then the door slammed shut behind me.

I jumped on the hovercycle and headed to the dock.

She still wasn't there. But I thought I saw tracks heading toward the old city, so I followed them.

I guess about the only thing I did wrong was leaving the hovercycle behind, right? You must have been looking for me there at the dock all this time.

I wonder where Clara was, anyway. I went past her trailer on the way, and I didn't see her. So, where the hell would she be?

Anyway, this is gonna sound stupid, but I thought I saw someone in the old city. So I started to poke around in those buildings.

And of course, that's where I was when the quakes hit.

I tried to hold on under a doorway, but before long, there were some really strong shear waves, and I started getting thrown all over the place. And then, of course, chunks of the ceiling started to come down on me.

This building used to be, like, five or six floors. And it all came down on top of me.

You probably tried to call me right after the quakes started. But my wrist was smashed, so you never would have gotten through to me.

You'll get a laugh when you finally find me, I'm sure. One arm free, the other crushed. My feet are trapped, too. And of course, I've got my pants pulled down.

After the first day, I didn't really have to pee much. I just haven't had enough water.

But now, well, I don't have long left. I can tell.

And all that'll be left of me is this digital audio recorder, which I didn't even know I had.

Told you cargo pants were useful.

This last week or so has been... well, actually I guess it hasn't really been that hard on me. At least my subconscious has kept me occupied by conjuring up you and Leela.

Of course, I can only guess how you've been dealing with all this. Maybe you're getting over it, but maybe... maybe you're thinking about suicide.

Or maybe you've already done it.

I thought about it after Leela died. And then some more after my parents died.

But I always thought that if I ever did, you'd take the gun out of my hands and shoot yourself the moment you found me.

Whether that's true or not, who knows. That's just what I thought.

Fry, I just hope someone comes along for you. Someone who loves you like I did. Someone whom you love like you did Leela.

I mean, you're... you're just so sweet. You'd never hurt anyone. And you just have such a sense of perspective. I guess that comes from suddenly being thrown into our world with no idea what the fuck is going on.

And when you find someone, when you find a girl, can you do something for me? Just jump right in, you know? Don't be afraid.

I think that's what Leela would say to you, at least.

So, I guess I've told you everything I needed to. So just, you know, try to do a good job. Don't screw it all up.

I'm just messing with you, of course. You'll...

_Yeah, maybe throwing out all this junk will make me feel better._

Oh god. Now I'm hearing Bender's voice.

_Just roll that one up here._

Wait, that sounds...

_Hey! Not there! No! What did you just do! Bad! Bad!_

Hey, Bender?

_I want you to sit there in that bulldozer and think about what you did! Okay?_

BENDER!

_Aah! Aaaah! Aaaagh! Agh! It's Amy's ghost! This place is haunted!_

No, Bender, it's really me!

_Eh? What?_

It's really me, Bender! I'm stuck down here!

_You are? Hang on!_

**_whirring_**

Ow! Bender!

_Was that you?_

Yeah, you just poked my stomach! Ow! Ow! Stop it!

_Holy crap, it is you! How you been?_

Can you get me out of here?

_Yeah, I think we can. Hang tight, okay?_

That's all I can do down here!

_Yeah, just lift up as much stuff as you can. She's right down there. Who? Amy, stupid!_

_Okay, we're almost down to you!_

Good!

_Let's get that one now. Hey! Careful! Watch it!_

**_crashing_**

_Hey! There she is! Hi, Amy! Come on, let's get her to the hospital! Let me just call Fry..._

_Hey, Fry! Guess who I found! No! No! Nope! No! I'll just tell you, okay? It's Amy!_

_No, stupid! She's alive! Seriously! Well, she's passed out right now, but she's... what's that thing you humans have when you're alive? No, the other one. A pulse! Yeah, she's got that!_

_Yeah, we're taking her there now. Okay, I'll see you there._

_Damn, Amy! How the hell did you survive down there that long? Hope they can fix you up back there. Nice ribs, skinpile._

**_Recording ends 20:03_**


End file.
